SPOKANE, Wash. – Opioid, specifically fentanyl, overdoses are dramatically rising across Washington and the nation. As the numbers climb in Spokane County, local elected leaders are having active conversations about declaring a public health emergency.
It’s not just the Spokane region either, just last month the Deschutes County Commission, in Oregon, declared a 90-day state of emergency to address the fentanyl crisis.
In the last ten years across the United States, drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. In 2015, around 45,000 people were killed by overdosing. This past year, that number rose to nearly 110,000 people: a more than 100 percent jump.
Health officials say the factor most contributing to the growth is the rise of fentanyl, a counterfeit killer. It’s mixed in pills in a huge vat by drug cartels, mainly in Mexico. For instance, 90 percent of a pill could be unharmful, but the other ten percent could contain a deadly dose of fentanyl.
On Monday, Spokane City Council heard from health and public officials regarding the local opioid crisis, and what declaring a public health emergency could look like.
“It’s one thing to talk about it, it’s another thing to actually declare an emergency,” Dr. Bob Lutz, Washington Department of Health medical officer, said. “Because then I think it raises the visibility, it raises the awareness, and I think it allows you as council members, us as a community, to really get behind the issue more.”
Dr. Bob Lutz, former Spokane health officer who has moved onto the state level, spoke before the council providing numbers that explain the spike in overdoses nation and statewide.
“Drug use overall has increased, it certainly spiked during the pandemic for any number of reasons and often times, people use substances because they don’t like the way they feel, and they want to feel differently,” Lutz said.
The road to addiction and overdosing is a road more and more people are walking down, right here in Spokane; opioids are taking over the streets, and those who respond to the emergency calls know this firsthand.
Including Justin de Ruyter with the Spokane Fire Department.
“It gets dark pretty quickly,” de Ruyter said.
As of February 7, 2024, Spokane Fire has received 249 overdose calls. That equates to an average of 6.38 OD calls a day. And the overdose demographic is predominantly male; 2023 shows 66 percent of overdose calls are for men, 26 percent for women. The average age of someone overdosing is 40.4 years old.
De Ruyter said fentanyl is the drug most people are overdosing on.
“It’s everywhere, it’s cheap. Really cheap,” he said. “Lots of bystanders are carrying Narcan now, and so that is definitely preventing deaths, because they’ll have one or two Doses of Narcan before we arrive often.”
The most common area where Narcan is delivered is the downtown core, zip code99201. De Ruyter said most of the people overdosing are hanging around the shelters downtown.
“Definitely majority of that, just looking at responses, but we’re seeing it out across the community as well,” he said.
Numbers across the state show overdose deaths are high, especially in Spokane County and on the west side of Washington.
All types of opioids are dangerous, often deadly when taken without a prescription. But in recent years we have seen the decline in drugs like heroin, and the increase in drugs like fentanyl, which is becoming quite versatile. Dr. Lutz pointed to city council out that most people are looking to smoke fentanyl, to vape it, but not to inject it.
“Fentanyl, if you will, gives you a quicker high and because of its metabolism you have to use it more frequently, and so from an addiction standpoint, it’s an incredibly effective substance that makes you keep coming back,” Dr. Lutz said.
As far as the declaration of a public health emergency, it is currently in the “conversation” phase, with nothing official on the books.
