Regina Police say five people have died as a result of drug overdoses in the city since the start of the year with another four being investigated.

In all, police say there have been 100 drug overdoses with 56 of them being responded to. Naloxone had to be administered 18 times.

Fentanyl is mainly to blame with police saying in a release that anyone who is an active user of illicit fentanyl or fentanyl analogs is putting themselves in danger. The situation became urgent in mid-February when there were two deaths in back-to-back days that were overdose-related with police saying a “bad batch” of drugs was on the street.