Fentanyl Overdoses Undergo 'Troubling Spike' In Washington

SEATTLE — Deadly overdoses were up significantly across the country during the first half of 2020. That's also true for Washington state, which saw a "stunning" growth in fentanyl overdoses according to UW Medicine.

A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control found that 81,230 Americans had died of drug overdoses in the year leading up to May 2020. It was the most overdoses the county had ever seen in 12 months, and Washington state did not escape unscathed.

As UW Medicine's Caleb Banta-Green explains, Washington saw 171 fentanyl overdose deaths in 2020's second quarter alone, up from 63 during the same time in 2019. There were just 18 overdose fatalities related to fentanyl in Q2 of 2017.

"Fentanyl actually hit the East Coast and Midwest first, in around 2013," Banta-Green said. "Its growth was slow and steady for several years before it really arrived here in about 2016. We’re at the tail end of a wave that’s been building across the country, so we've gone from a low point to a high point quickly."

Banta-Green is the head researcher for the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute. He says that, while the latest available data ends at May 2020 before the pandemic hit full swing, pandemic isolation may have caused further complications.

"We know that a person is more likely to die of an overdose if they are alone. Everyone had more time alone last year," Banta-Green said. "It's a reasonable theory that the overdoses would leap with a drug in high supply, mixed with the continuing pressures of social determinants of health, and then on top of that the isolation and stress of a pandemic."

Banta-Green says one reason these overdoses are spiking is because fentanyl looks fairly innocuous: it comes in the form of a pill, sometimes pressed to look like another opioid, and there is a misplaced sense that pills are less deadly or dangerous than injected drugs like heroin.

"Our sense is that the drug has an aura of safety because it looks like a pill. And we’re seeing an increasing number of people in the state who are coming to treatment for “Perc 30’s,” most of whom realize it’s really fentanyl," said Banta-Green. "The challenge we deal with is the adolescents’ sense of invincibility and their misplaced trust in the person who sells them the drug. It feels very much like what I saw in 2003 with Ecstacy. People got scammed all the time, sometimes with deadly results."

Unfortunately, it seems fentanyl is likely here to stay. Researchers say that synthetic compounds like fentanyl have overtaken the drug market, and now that supply lines have been established, they'll be hard to cut off.

If there is a positive side, it's that some programs have seen success mitigating the damage. One useful tool has been naloxone kits, which were used to reverse more than 2,000 overdoses in Washington last year. Banta-Green estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of those overdoses would have been fatal, meaning up to 100 lives were saved.

"That said, I think we can get a better handle on it. We're deploying interventions in a unique way compared to much of the country, in terms of low-barrier, rapid access to judgement-free care," said Banta-Green.