The fentanyl crisis around the sound is gaining speed with no signs of slowing.
Both King County and Snohomish County are seeing more people die from opioid overdoses this year compared to last.
In the first three months of 2023 in Snohomish County, over 80 people’s lives were cut short due to opioid overdoses. More people in Snohomish County died in the first half of 2023 than in all of 2020.
“It tells me that we have a lot of unmet needs to address this crisis. it’s an ongoing and worsening crisis that’s just terrible,” said Dr. James Lewis, a Health Officer with the Snohomish County Health Department. He added, “If you do the second quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of 2023, we saw a 68.2% increase. and then if you look at the first half of the year all together it’s 61% more overdose deaths compared to last year.”
January through June of 2023, 140 people died from opioids in Snohomish County. That’s compared to 87 people in the same timeframe last year.
Those overdose rates are dwarfed by King County’s numbers. Through August 727 died from opioids, 704 of those deaths are attributed to fentanyl. In all of 2022, 712 people died from fentanyl. Pierce County’s numbers only go through September 2022. Fentanyl was behind 141 of 212 overdoses.
