State sees rise in overdose deaths

Overdose deaths are rising nationally, in Washington state and on the North Olympic Peninsula. According to the University of Washington’s Addiction, Drugs and Alcohol Institute, drug test submissions to the state crime lab showed fentanyl cases more than doubling in the second quarter of 2023 compared to an average quarter in the past three years.

The institute notes that crime lab testing levels decreased following the 2021 Washington v. Blake which effectively decriminalized drug possession in the state, but the number of cases testing positive for fentanyl appears to be higher than before Blake.

“Over the past few years, the most prominent drug categories—featuring frequent notable jumps in many counties and/or statewide—have been fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and novel benzodiazepines,” according to the Addiction, Drugs and Alcohol Institute (ADAI).

“Fentanyl and fentanyl analogue seizures increased in Central and Western Washington in the third quarter of 2023, despite the overall depressed count of drug-positive cases,” ADAI said.

King County saw a 47 percent increase in fentanyl overdoses in 2023, with more than 1,000 fatal overdoses involving fentanyl.

Several state statistics show the number of overdose deaths beginning to rise in 2019, which is when fentanyl really started to arrive in Washington state, according to Jason Williams, a research scientist with ADAI.

“Fentanyl came late to Washington,” Williams said. “When it did it displaced other substitutions and then it replaced other drugs.”

Fentanyl is stronger, cheaper, and it doesn’t need to be injected in order to produce a strong effect, which may have attracted new customers, Williams said.

“From the seller processor side, the beauty of fentanyl is you can hide dozens of doses in a little tiny space for transport,” Williams said. “The same volume of space that might have transported 100 doses of heroin can now transport 10,000 doses of fentanyl.”

There are several factors that lead people to drug use, William said, and why people are using is a difficult question to answer. But with fentanyl, Williams said people often don’t know how much of the drug they’re actually using.

“There’s all kinds of contextual factors that feed into why an individual might turn to a powerful substance, not least of which is physical pain,” Williams said. “There’s no one story, it’s often several stories and several layers that lead them to that position.”