SPOKANE, Wash. – Paul Dillon requested that the Governor’s office declare a state of emergency on Monday.
During an Urban Experience committee meeting, Paul Dillon raised concerns about the use of fentanyl in Spokane. He put forth a resolution to create a plan to address this problem which will be voted on at the next city council meeting on March 25.
Justin de Ruyter of the Spokane Fire Department says there has been a roughly 30% increase in overdose calls each year over the last three years. The majority of overdose calls in Spokane are due to fentanyl, de Ruyter said.
“I mean every time we drive downtown were seeing it, so that’s predominantly what’s out there,” de Ruyter said.
Paul Dillon hopes that a state of emergency would increase access to funds to help improve reporting overdose numbers, provide resources to those helping people with drug addictions, and supply Narcan, an overdose reversing drug.
“Requesting a statewide emergency would open up more resources, especially around Narcan. The resolution does some other things as well, that includes better data reporting. It asks the health district to create a real-time dashboard on overdoses,” Dillon said.
NonStop Local KHQ reached out to the governor’s office and Mike Faulk, Press Secretary for the Office of Governor Jay Inslee provided a statement that said in part:
“The governor’s staff previously looked into this for fentanyl extensively and there are no new resources we know that would be available under such an action,” Faulk said.
Dillon says that Spokane is behind specifically in the reporting of overdoses, and a plan of action to address these issues is something the city needs.
“This is a public health crisis and we need a public health response. And I think that too often politics has gotten in the way of how we address this issue that is touching so many lives,” Dillon said.
De Ruyter says the fire department is already working to address many of these concerns.
“If this is for awareness, were well aware of the problem. If it’s for data sharing, that’s gotten much better in the last month even. If it’s for Narcan, we haven’t had any shortages, a good percentage of the overdoses we go on, they’ve already got Narcan before our arrival. So that’s out in the community,” de Ruyter said.
Two counties in Washington already have a real-time reporting dashboard for overdoses according to Paul Dillon, and he hopes Spokane will become the third. There is an Opioid town hall scheduled for April 9 that Dillon believes will be a productive space to address these topics.
