International Overdose Awareness Day was recognized this week in Oxford County, with a series of events to mark 25 years of remembering those lost to addictions. In Tillsonburg, resident Gary Graham was on hand to check out an awareness campaign by the Oxford Mental Health and Addictions Action Coalition (OMHAAC) Thursday. He pulled no punches when describing the situation in the downtown. “Every day there’s ambulances out here looking after overdosed people,” Graham said. He said the addiction crisis is also contributing to homelessness in the community. “They’re pretty much all in the underground, or they’re spread all over the place. The town should be doing something about it,” he remarked. Members of OMHAAC had a display set up in front of the Tillsonburg mall in the heart of downtown. They were spreading awareness of the ongoing crisis, handing out naloxone kits, and even training people how to use them to save lives. OMHAAC member Patti Monaghan says street drugs appear to be getting stronger. “We are noticing that one naloxone kit isn’t enough. We need to do multiple, sometimes up to like five or six kits of administering naloxone, because the substances that are out there are a lot more serious than prior years,” she explained. According to OHMAAC, the rate of opioid-related incidents resulting in ER visits in Oxford County peaked in 2021 during the pandemic. While it declined through 2024 (44.2 per 100,000 population), it remained more than five times higher than 10 years earlier in 2014 (7.2 per 100,000 population). Opioid-related deaths also peaked in 2021, before declining by 2024 (15.5 per 100,000 population). But the rate was still more than one and a half times higher than in 2018, pre-pandemic (9.3 per 100,000 population). Joanne Beresford, Administrator at the Tillsonburg BIA, says the ongoing opioid crisis shows little signs of waning, and is being felt most in the downtown. “This is where the hub is. Unfortunately, things happen at night-time and sometimes during the day as well. It’s a sad state apparently when they come in sometimes in the morning and everything’s turned upside down and graffitied on and whatever,” she said. OHMAAC hosted awareness events this week in Woodstock as well. Patti Monaghan asked that people have compassion. “Nobody wants to live this life. Nobody wants to be stuck in these cycles of addiction,” she said.
