Drug overdoses killing Indigenous people at three times the rate of other Australians

By Keira Jenkins / NITV News

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are dying from drug overdoses at three times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians, according to Australia's Annual Overdose report.

The report, published by drug and alcohol research centre, the Pennington Institute, showed that 473 Indigenous people died of unintentional overdoses between 2014 to 2018.

In 2018, there were 17.3 unintentional overdose deaths per 100,000 Indigenous Australians.

This rate had almost doubled since 2009 and compared to 6.0 unintentional overdose deaths per 100,000 among non-Indigenous Australians in 2018.