The Medical Examiner’s Office of King County — home to Seattle, WA — says its morgue is running out of space to store bodies following a rise in fentanyl-related deaths.
The Director of Public Health for King County, Dr. Faisal Khan, brought attention to the situation at a recent Board of Health meeting, “A key indication of just how bad things are at the end of 2022, and likely to get worse in 2023 — the Medical Examiner’s office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb.”
The county morgue contains a limited amount of space in its coolers to store corpses — a limit that is regularly being reached, according to Khan. From the information provided at the King County Board of Health meeting, it is unclear what officials plan to do if there is not enough space for the bodies they receive.
The surge in fentanyl-related deaths is not confined to Seattle but is a major problem across the country’s metropolitan areas.
Khan stated that “the rise in fentanyl nationally and locally over the past few years has led to a much more dangerous drug supply. Fentanyl has increased the risk of overdose and death, even from taking one pill or using a small amount of powder. It is now involved in 70 percent of King County overdose deaths, as of December 2022.”
Fentanyl-related deaths are also on the rise in Oregon. Multnomah County, which houses Portland, has seen the number of fentanyl overdose fatalities increase by 533 percent from 2018 to 2022. Just this week, the county declared a 90-day emergency and the plan to establish a “command center” to triage fentanyl users in Portland’s “central city.”
Despite the 2020 passage of Ballot Measure 110 to fund new drug treatment programs across the state, Oregon has experienced a shortage of substance-use treatment providers and recovery centers. Measure 110 states that “The people of Oregon further find that a health-based approach to addiction and overdose is more effective, humane and cost-effective than criminal punishments. Making people criminals because they suffer from addiction is expensive, ruins lives and can make access to treatment and recovery more difficult.”
The “health-based” approach of the new law has thus far proved futile in lowering fentanyl-related deaths or expanding further drug treatment.
According to a new Oregon Secretary of State audit of the drug decriminalization law, most of the grant money instituted by Measure 110 has yet to reach the people who need it. As reported by the Oregonian, Oregon has handed out an estimated $261 million in grants for drug treatment and recovery services under Measure 110, but only $95 million of that amount had actually been spent by service providers in that window, from July 2022 to June 2023.
Treatment networks set up in each county under the drug decriminalization law began to increase their spending over time, “but the first year of reporting showed limited spending and services amid difficulty hiring staff and other challenges, raising risks that some of Oregon’s 42 networks may not provide all required services,” the auditors said.
The audit, analyzing a three-month period of spring 2023, found that networks in a dozen Oregon counties failed to provide Measure 110 services. Another five counties served fewer than 15 people during the same period. One county “reported no clients served, noting hiring challenges and low patient awareness of services.”
The state-wide decriminalization of illicit drugs also limited the state’s ability to strong-arm addicts into drug treatment programs, meaning fewer and fewer users are receiving treatment. State lawmakers are aiming to renegotiate said decriminalization in this year’s legislative session.