The sad fact is that most of us don’t know, and don’t care, that International Overdose Awareness Day is today - Saturday, September 1.

The shame around drug overdose deaths means that we choose not to count them in the same way that we count those who die on our roads, for example.

Even though, for the past decade more people have died from unintentional drug overdoses than have died on our roads.

In fact, since the turn of the century more than 42,000 Australians have died through unintentional overdoses.

What makes this year different, is that we are on the brink of an unprecedented - but still avoidable - catastrophic increase in overdose deaths.

So, what has this got to do with the Legalise Cannabis Party?

The answer is – unfortunately – quite a lot.

One of many reasons to legalise cannabis (and provide a legal defence for unimpaired medicinal cannabis drivers) is because of those 42,000 deaths, the number caused by using cannabis is exactly zero. Zilch.

Cannabis is a drug where unintentional overdose has been simply impossible – until now.

Just this week, NSW Health issued an alert stating that in the last six weeks, four patients in Sydney have presented to hospital suffering “severe opioid” withdrawal after using non-nicotine vapes, some described as containing cannabinoids.

Poisoning can occur after just six puffs on the vape.

In Queensland, a teenager died and a young man was left struggling to breathe after vaping what they thought was a synthetic cannabis vape, but actually adulterated with synthetic opioids.

These powerful drugs killed 100,000 people in the United States in 2021. They are already killing people in the UK and other advanced economies.

They are manufactured in China and are more than 500 times more powerful than heroin, which makes them attractive and relatively easy for criminal gangs to import.

This means that powerful synthetic opioids are turning up in a full range of illicit drugs – MDMA, ketamine, cocaine, illicit benzodiazepines and – yes – even cannabis.

Which means that if we want to prevent people, especially our young people, dying as a result of a single bad decision, we need to take action immediately.

On Tuesday, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with peak drug harm minimisation organisations calling for an immediate action plan to keep people safe.

One key plank is to establish publicly accessible drug checking services so people who think they are vaping cannabis or taking MDMA at a music festival know that they not in danger of dying from a synthetic opioid overdose.

There is really no good argument against this, other than condemning people to a sudden death simply because they choose to take a mind-altering substance.

People will take drugs whether we like it or not, it is our duty to do our best to keep them alive.