King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht shows a picture of an ordinary fentanilla pill found in King County. (Aaron Granillo, KIRO Radio)
Fentanyl has been a driving force for fatal overdoses in Washington state for years now, and by 2020 it was never clear again.
The context behind fentanyl overdose in Washington state
In the second quarter of 2020, 171 overdoses of fentanyl were involved, according to data cited by Caleb Banta-Green, a research scientist at the Institute of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (ADAI) at the University of Washington.
Over the same period in 2019, Washington saw only 63 overdoses of fentanyl; two years before that there were 18.
This creates a trend that Banta-Green describes as ‘amazing’.
“We are on the tail end of a wave that has built up across the country, so we have quickly gone from a low to a high,” he said recently in a question and answer to UW Medicine.
Fentanyl is commonly found in counterfeit pills that look like prescriptions like oxycodone. The risk is due to the fact that fentanyl is between 30 and 50 times as strong as pure heroin, and that the dose as large as a few grains of salt can be lethal.
As Banta-Green explains, it first began spreading along the East Coast and Midwest in 2013 before gradually moving across the United States to the West Coast. On the question of whether the pandemic in 2020 could have driven the clear increase, he believes that there could very well be a connection.
‘We know that a person is more likely to die from an overdose if he is alone. “Everyone had more time alone last year,” he pointed out. “It is a reasonable theory that the overdose will jump with a drug in a high stock, mixed with the constant pressure of social determinants of health, and on top of that the isolation and tension of a pandemic.”
‘What is interesting, however, is that we have not seen the same sharp increase with heroin and pharmaceutical opioids – just fentanyl. We do not know why, “he added.
In the coming months, Banta-Green believes Washington has a chance to handle the situation better, and suggests that unique intervention methods are being used across the state.
It is driven by ‘low barrier, rapid access to judgment-free care’ promoted by ADAI, educating people on how to recognize fentanyl in counterfeit pills, thousands of naloxone kits that reverse overdose and distribution treatment with drugs such as buprenorphine and methadone.
Seattle to fund 700 naloxone sets as part of fentanyl awareness
“A lot of our work at ADAI is trying to understand the problem, understand how clinicians handle it, and to train clinicians around the world in a medication-first approach, including client-centered, shared decision-making,” he explained. .
You can read more on their website here about the work that ADAI is doing in the state of Washington.