'THIS COULD BE YOUR KID'

Inside the life of Ula Chalmers, a 16-year-old girl who died from a suspected overdose in December

- JIM RANKIN

Amanda Chalmers says she wants people to know that her daughter, Ula, who died of a suspected overdose in Toronto in 2023, could be anyone's kid.

Ula Chalmers helped with the tree decorations that day, because Christmas was always a big deal in the home, then had friends over, and cooked up a favourite chicken dish — heavy on the hot sauce.

Gifted at many things, Ula was an artist and social justice advocate, she played hockey and was also a “nerd” who cared deeply for friends going through rough times. Like many teens in the post-pandemic period, she also had teenage anxieties and a curiosity for drinking and party drugs. She knew enough to start carrying a naloxone kit.

Ula went out that night.

She died between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Dec. 10, 2023, in a rock garden near a west-end Toronto subway station — a suspected fentanyl overdose.

Within months, two other 16-year-olds in Ula’s cohort would also die of accidental overdoses, triggering shock waves of trauma for all those around them.

Deaths from opioid toxicity among young Ontarians aged 15 to 24 have risen dramatically in the last decade. Between 2014 and 2021, overdose deaths tripled and visits to emergency departments quadrupled, according to recent research by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network at Unity Health Toronto.

While people of all ages are dying in the toxic drug crisis, and at a time when Ontario is shutting down many safe drug consumption sites, young people are faring worse. And, the Unity research found, those same young people are accessing opioid treatments — like methadone or admission to residential treatment centres — to lesser degrees than older adults.

Last year, the Star’s editorial board wrote of a systemic “failure” to “recognize, or to respond to, drug problems among teens and young adults.”