Seattle’s Ballard branch library. Photo by Dennis Bratland, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-4.0 license.
By Erica C. Barnett
If you need to use the restrooms at the Lake City, Ballard, Capitol Hill, or International District libraries and find them closed, it may be thanks to new “air-quality sensors” that detect vapor from drugs that don’t set off regular smoke detectors, like fentanyl and meth, and alert staff to immediately close the restrooms down for at least 15 minutes or until the air quality improves to a minimum threshold level.
Library staff already have the authority to issue temporary or permanent bans for people who use drugs in the restrooms and other violations of the library’s code of conduct or the law.
According to Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Elisa Murray, SPL decided to start shutting down restrooms at certain branches in response to drug use as a way to protect patrons and staff.
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“Prior to implementing this technology, staff only became aware of unsafe conditions when fumes reached the service desks or when a patron comment prompted staff to enter the restrooms and detect smells, at which point they’re already risking exposure,” Murray said. “An alert allows the behavior to be interrupted as early as possible, and access to live data informs staff decisions about whether or not the restrooms should remain closed without exposing staff to harmful chemicals.”
King County has long advised that fentanyl “fumes” are generally harmless. “When someone smokes fentanyl, most of the drug has been filtered out by the user before there is secondhand smoke. It doesn’t just sort of float around,” Washington Poison Center medical director Scott Phillips said in a King County Public Health blog post in 2022. “There’s no real risk for the everyday person being exposed to secondhand opioid smoke.”
Despite this, Murray said library “staff have reported feeling sick from drug-related fumes, and we have had to close restrooms because of fumes related to drug activity. Air quality sensors help us maintain a safe and healthy environment for both staff and patrons.”
Murray said the library has received no complaints from patrons or staff about the restroom closures. Using or possessing drugs in public became a misdemeanor in 2023, and people accused of either offense can be banished from certain parts of the city even without a conviction.
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Sandeep and I sat down with new Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans and Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion founder Lisa Daugaard on this week’s episode to talk about changes Evans is making to the way the city handles low-level drug cases.
Under Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, people arrested for simple drug possession or using in public were either jailed and prosecuted or sent to a “drug prosecution alternative” where they have to get an assessment to confirm they have an addiction and stay out of trouble for six month.
Evans directed her prosecutors to go back to the pre-Davison policy of reviewing people’s cases to see if they’re eligible for LEAD, the city’s pre-filing diversion program. In response to this reasonable directive, Police Chief Shon Barnes told his officers that going forward, officers had to refer every drug case to LEAD—an overstatement that led to a right-wing media freakout when police guild director Mike Solan claimed Mayor Katie Wilson had ordered an end to all drug arrests.
Evans and Daugaard set the record straight, explaining what LEAD does, who it’s for, and how they believe this policy shift will actually help people addicted to fentanyl who use in public—which, they both reminded is, is encoded in the 2023 “Blake fix” law that empowered the city attorney to prosecute minor drug cases in the first place.
“What we’re doing is not anything inconsistent with what the law has already recommended for our office to be doing,” Evans told us. “But nothing’s off the table. If someone is not making meaningful progress with LEAD or in diversion, then we do reserve the right to do traditional prosecution.”
We also discussed ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and what the city can do if Trump sends masked shock troops to Seattle. And we asked Daugaard, who co-founded Purpose Dignity Action and started LEAD, why she’s taking a leave of absence to work inside the Wilson administration.
Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks at a press conference last year.
Chief Shon Barnes apparently didn’t consult with LEAD or the city attorney’s office before telling police they should start referring every drug arrest to LEAD.
By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes sent a memo to officers last week directing them to refer most people caught using or possessing drugs in public to LEAD, the pre-booking diversion program that provides case management and other services to people accused of low-level criminal activity.
“Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program,” Barnes told officers in an internal email. “All instances of drug use or possession will be referred to Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD)—a program designed to redirect low-level offenders in King County from the criminal justice system into supportive social services.”
The announcement by Barnes appears to have been a dramatic overreaction to an internal memo from City Attorney Erika Evans directing her prosecutors to refer drug use and possession cases to an internal team to determine if they are eligible for LEAD. This represents a shift from the policy established by Evans’ predecessor, Ann Davison, who allowed people charged with misdemeanor possession or drug use to avoid charges by getting an addiction assessment and not getting arrested again for six months—the opposite of a therapeutic approach.
“The LEAD Liaison Team will assess previous attempts at engagement with the referred individual in consultation with LEAD,” Evans’ memo, which PubliCola received from her office, said. “If the referred individual has failed to demonstrate a sustained level or engagement with the LEAD program or has refused to engage with a LEAD case manager, the LEAD Liaison will assess the most suitable subsequent action in consultation with the Criminal Division Chief.”
Barnes responded to Evans’ memo by sending an email blast to all SPD officers saying that “Effective immediately, all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the LEAD program,” an inaccurate description of Evans’ directive to her staff. Barnes continued:
If an individual fails to comply with the LEAD program, traditional prosecutorial measures will apply. As you know, LEAD is a familiar alternative-to-arrest program that we have been utilizing for some time. This change aligns with Seattle City Ordinance 126896. Please note that this diversion does not apply to individuals who are ineligible for LEAD or to those arrested for selling or delivering controlled substances. User-quantity cases may be diverted; sell-and-deliver cases will not.
My expectation is that officers will continue to charge individuals for drug use or possession when appropriate-for example, when the activity occurs in public view or when probable cause for arrest is established.
The announcement quickly blew up thanks to an inaccurate story by KOMO, which reported—apparently without speaking to LEAD, Wilson’s office, Barnes, or Evans—that Wilson herself had “ordered officers to stop arresting people for open drug use.” (The origin of the accusation: Bombastic police union leader Mike Solan, who recently announced he won’t run for reelection). Right-wing social media accounts ran wild with the fake version of the story, forcing Wilson to issue a statement: “You’ll know when I announce a policy change, because I’ll announce a policy change.”
(Apparently, it didn’t help: Wilson was mobbed by TV cameras after Evans’ inauguration Monday afternoon at City Hall.)
In her statement, Wilson affirmed that her public safety policy includes “enforcement of the possession and public use ordinance in priority situations and ensuring that the LEAD framework and other effective responses to neighborhood hot spots are implemented with an appropriate level of urgency, sufficient resources, and a commitment to results.”
This, in effect, is what the city’s policy toward low-level drug crime was prior to 2023, when Davison and then-mayor Bruce Harrell pushed to change city law to empower SPD to start arresting people for simple drug possession and public use.
Although Barnes insisted that the policy hasn’t changed, he also referred to “this change” in the same email email. Many officers interpreted Barnes’ contradictory memo as a directive to no longer arrest people for drug use and simple possession but instead refer them straight to LEAD.
The police chief didn’t bother seeking information or feedback from the organization that runs LEAD, Purpose Dignity Action, before emailing officers about the change in policy, and he exaggerated the policy change by portraying as a kind of blanket amnesty for misdemeanor drug crime. Even if the PDA wanted to take on “all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use” they couldn’t afford to. LEAD had to stop taking community referrals into the program after the drug law passed in 2023, and a $5 million budget boost last year will only fund another 500 to 600 slots in the program this year.
LEAD co-director Brandi McNeil said that’s “a significant number,” but it’s well “below the total number of people who would qualify and be appropriate candidates for LEAD. We will need to strategize with police, prosecutors, the Mayor, the Council, and County officials (our funders) to focus that capacity on high priority situations and individuals.”
LEAD tries to take on clients who are likely to benefit from their services, as opposed to everyone who has been accused of a particular misdemeanor. “Part of our job is to accurately forecast what capacity we will have, and to work with our partners to decide which, among the pool of people who chronically commit law violations related to behavioral health issues or poverty, should be prioritized for our available slots,” McNeil said.
Barnes also misstated the criteria for LEAD eligibility, saying people arrested for selling or delivering drugs are ineligible for the program; in fact, LEAD began as an effort to benefit this specific group of people, who were cycling through courts and jail without getting any assistance for the underlying issues that were causing them to earn a living through illegal means. LEAD still serves people accused of selling up to 7 grams of drugs, which means almost anyone involved in low-level drug sales is eligible for the program.
Finally, Barnes’ description of the conditions in which “officers will charge” people for public drug use are confusing and ambiguous: “Probable cause” is supposed to exist before officers make any arrest, and it’s unclear what distinction Barnes is making between “public drug use” and drug use that “occurs in public view.”
SPD did not respond to questions sent last week attempting to clarify what Barnes meant by these distinctions. However, they did send out an email to media in response to the right-wing blowback on Monday. “To be clear, nothing has changed when it comes to police continuing to make drug-related arrests in Seattle,” Barnes said in the statement (emphasis in original), adding that police will “continue to make arrests for drug-related charges if they have probable cause.”
In a department-wide email, the Seattle Police Department wellness team invited officers and their spouses to sign up for a retreat hosted by the Billy Graham Law Enforcement Ministry. The evangelist group, which espouses fundamental Christian views, is controversial: In 2021, then-chief Adrian Diaz rescinded an invite to a dinner hosted by the ministry. An SPD spokesperson said there was nothing unusual about the invitation—a sign, perhaps, of how much things have changed under Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Shon Barnes.
Lee Hunt, part of the cohort of new executive staff Police Chief Barnes brought in when he was hired last year, spent a month staying at the four-star Arctic Hotel last year on the city-s dime—a $6,300 expense SPD said was a normal part of a “relocation package” provided to all the new hires.
Besides boosting rookie officers’ pay to $126,000 after their first six months, the new Seattle Police Officers Guild contract allows sergeants to investigate minor misconduct, which has previously gone to the Office of Police Accountability, freeing OPA to spend more time on serious allegations. While the change was generally noncontroversial, the definition of “serious misconduct” appears to exclude professionalism—meaning that situations like ex-SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer’s “jokes” about the killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula by a speeding police officer might not see the light of day in the future.
City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican who lost to Erika Evans by 34 points this year, accelerated filings of misdemeanor drug possession cases during the last few months of her term, more than quadrupling prosecutions against people caught possessing drugs in public, generally homeless people with addiction. Private use and possession of illegal drugs has not been a policy priority for the police or Davison.
The latest 10-year update to the Seattle comprehensive plan—still a work in progress thanks to delays by outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office—actually allows eight-unit, three-story apartment buildings on every residential lot in Seattle, thanks to density rules that encourage “stacked flats” instead of townhouses. If developers save trees or add eco-friendly landscaping, that number goes up to 10 units and four stories.
Outgoing City Council president Sara Nelson’s proposal to bar political consultants from working for the city itself while also running election campaigns was ultimately reduced to a mere disclosure bill—meaning consultants like Christian Sinderman can still work for city candidates while working for elected officials (and even having dedicated offices) at City Hall.
Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson appointed Angela Brady, currently head of the city’s waterfront office, to replace Harrell appointee Adiam Emery as head of the Seattle Department of Transportation. In addition to overseeing the transformation of the downtown waterfront, Brady was in charge of the Mercer reconstruction project, which was supposed to fix the “Mercer Mess” in South Lake Union.
City Councilmember Sara Nelson and City Attorney Ann Davison in 2024; both will leave office at the end of this year.
By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has accelerated filings of misdemeanor drug possession cases during the last few months of her term, more than quadrupling drug prosecutions from an average of 4 a week between mid-June and mid-September to 16.4 a week between mid-September and December 15.
The city attorney also prosecuted more people for public drug use, increasing prosecutions from virtually none between June and September (an average of 0.5 a day) to 3.5 a day between mid-September and December 15, a seven-fold increase.
The Seattle Municipal Court compiled the numbers for violations of the city’s recently passed drug laws, which made it a misdemeanor to possess any amount of an illegal drug in public, at PubliCola’s request.
The city council passed the law, which empowered the city attorney to prosecute people for drug possession and use for the first time in the city’s history, in 2023. The following year, they passed a companion bill that reinstated special “Stay Out of Drug Area” banishment zones for people accused of violating the new drug laws, a tactic dating back to the early 1990s that the city had long abandoned as ineffective.
Earlier this year, Davison replaced Community Court, which she unilaterally ended in 2023, with a “drug prosecution alternative” that allows people arrested under the new drug laws to have their charges dismissed if they do an assessment to confirm their addiction and don’t get arrested again.
A spokesman for Davison’s office, Tim Robinson, said the spike in filings is “simply a matter of an increase in referrals” by the Seattle Police Department—when police arrest more people for misdemeanor drug violations, they file more charges.
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“When our review and filing unit reviews the referrals, they determine if there are sufficient legal grounds to move the case forward,” Robinson said. “This includes whether or not the alleged conduct violates a specific law and if the evidence supports the elements of the alleged offense. An individual involved in a case is referred to the Drug Prosecution Alternative whenever possible.”
However, the decision to file charges is discretionary, not automatic; the entire premise of the LEAD program, which diverts people involved in the criminal justice system away from prosecution, is that services are more effective than jail.
Incoming city attorney Erika Evans, who defeated Davision by a margin of 34 points in November, said diversion to treatment and services, not prosecution, “should be the default response for people dealing with substance use disorder.”
“Traditional prosecution should only be considered after meaningful attempts at diversion and support have not been successful,” Evans said. “When diversion alone is not working, I believe a community court model for people dealing with substance use disorder can provide accountability for progress while still keeping treatment and services at the center.”
As PubliCola has reported, the overwhelming majority of people arrested for violating Seattle’s drug laws end up cycling through the system without actually getting any kind of treatment.
“I am skeptical of any drug alternative program that relies primarily on increased charging rather than meaningful diversion,” Evans said. “When I take office, I look forward to working closely with the courts, the mayor, DPD, and our office to transform the current model into one that follows the law’s legislative intent, uses public dollars responsibly, and actually helps people get out of this cycle, not deeper into it.”
D. Williams, a LEAD program participant, in his tiny home in North Seattle.
While Seattle’s outgoing mayor and city attorney credit drug arrests and prosecutions, public health evidence suggests other causes.
By Andrew Engelson
Fatal overdoses have declined for two years in a row in Seattle—a sliver of hope in the ongoing opioid epidemic. Mayor Bruce Harrell has claimed greater enforcement of the city’s drug laws has saved lives. Others, including health experts at King County, argue that evidence-based public health approaches should get the credit.
According to Public Health Seattle & King County, the number of fatal drug overdoses in King County has declined 31 percent since hitting a peak in 2023. So far in 2025, the county has confirmed 796 fatal overdoses, including 564 that involved fentanyl—a slight dip since this time in 2024, following a decline of about 22 percent between 2023 and 2024.
Harrell’s office credited a 42 percent increase in felony drug dealing arrests by the Seattle Police Department, along with new programs that have increased access to treatment and buprenorphine, for lowering the number of overdoses.
“Our comprehensive approach to the fentanyl crisis is showing real results, helping keep our neighborhoods safe,” Harrell said in a statement. “We are aggressively targeting and arresting the drug traffickers and dealers who bring these deadly poisons into our city, and I am grateful for our strong partnership with King County prosecutors in holding offenders accountable.”
But Brad Finegood, who leads the public health department’s opioid and overdose response, said the drop in fatal overdoses in King County is likely due to a multi-pronged public health effort across the county that includes increasedaccess to injectable buprenorphine, a drug that helps suppress cravings for more dangerous opioids like fentanyl, and a massive campaign to distribute the overdose reversal drug naloxone.
While the decrease is encouraging, Finegood said the numbers are “still at an unacceptable number, and they could go back up real easily.”.
Data as of November 25, 2025.
It’s been two years since the city of Seattle passed a law making it a misdemeanor to possess illegal drugs or use them in public (previously, possession was a felony that the King County Prosecutor’s Office generally declined to prosecute). SPD has used the law to refer about 800 people arrested for minor drug offenses into the LEAD diversion program, which offers people accused of low-level offenses a way to avoid charges and access services. About 500 of those referrals 500 came about as the result of an arrest; the other 300 were “social contact” referrals, in which police officers refer someone to the program without an arrest.
Meanwhile, outgoing City Attorney Ann Davison’s office prosecuted 215 people under the new drug law between October 2023 and January 2025. Last month, the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD) published a report critical of the law, finding that of the 215 people prosecuted using the law since October 2023, only six completed treatment or received a substance use assessment.
Drug policy in Seattle will likely look much different in the next four years under progressive mayor-elect Katie Wilson, who campaigned on a public health-focused approach to the fentanyl crisis, and under former prosecutor Erika Evans, who will be replacing Davison, a Republican, as city attorney. Evans says she wants to significiantly reduce the number of people prosecuted for drug use and possession and to “bring back a reimagined community court”—a therapeutic court Davison dismantled in 2023.
Evans called the fact that just six people prosecuted under the drug use law went through treatment or evaluation a “huge failure.”
“As the next city attorney, [I’m] going to be working to expand our partnership with LEAD to make sure folks that are dealing with substance use disorder are getting connected with services and treatment,” she said.
D. Williams is just one of many people who turned his life around thanks to LEAD.
Williams, who asked PubliCola to use only use his first initial and last name, lives in a cozy 10 foot-by-10 foot shelter at Catholic Community Services’ Junction Point tiny house village in north Seattle. After serving jail time for convictions on possession charges and violating a no-contact order, Williams was in a bad state.
“It was all bad: homeless, addiction,” Williams said. “Lack of self-worth. A lot of hatred.”
After five people close to him died in close succession, Williams decided he needed to make a change.
In the summer of 2024, Williams asked an officer for a social contact referral to LEAD. He was connected with Casey Pham, a case manager at Evergreen Treatment Service’s REACH program, and started treatment. But like many drug users, Williams only stayed for a few days before leaving the program and going back to using. “I was really sick, real bad,” Williams says of his experience of withdrawal. “But I kept pushing. I kept being persistent.”
Williams said that each time he relapsed, he regretted it. “Every time I did it again, it was with that much more hatred inside of me, and that’s a heavy burden to carry.”
Another time when he sought treatment, William was told he’d need to wait 14 days for an opening. He told the organization, “I don’t know if I’ll even be here. I can’t wait that long.”
Despite the barriers, Williams eventually completed treatment, and though his path to recovery still has its ups and downs, he has a roof over his head and is attending computer science classes at North Seattle College. “I feel much better. I can lift my head up now,” he said. “I don’t have to walk around with that shame on my back.”
But the fact that the city attorney’s office still prosecuted 215 people was a waste of resources, DPD contends.
Katie Hurley, special counsel for criminal practice and policy at DPD, said many of the people who end up getting prosecuted for drug misdemeanors were arrested for possessing “incredibly small” amounts of drugs.
In April, according to Seattle Municipal Court records, SPD arrested a man at 12th Ave. S and S Jackson St.—a longtime hot spot for drug activity—and was charged him with possession based on traces of drugs, tin foil, and a straw. The police report did not mention any attempts at diversion.
Also in April, a man who had previously been found incompetent to stand trial on an unrelated charge was arrested for smoking an unidentified substance. Despite his previous evaluation, Davison’s office charged the man, and two weeks later he was found incompetent to stand trial. He received no referral to LEAD or services.
Last September, another man was arrested at 12th and Jackson for allegedly smoking an illegal substance. He was booked into jail and charged, but later the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.
“It’s an obscene use of resources,” Hurley said. “It’s very dehumanizing that we’re going to lock a person like this up, considering the amount of resources it takes.”
Tim Robinson, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, pointed to the city attorney’s new Drug Prosecution Alternative (DPA) program that debuted in August, which offers people a chance to avoid prosecution if they get evaluated for substance use disorder. So far, 34 out of 70 people who received offers to participate in the program have chosen to do so, Robinson said.
DPA participants must agree to a “stay out of drug area” (SODA) order, which banishes a person accused of breaking the city’s drug laws from specific areas; violating a SODA order is a separate misdemeanor.
Evans, the incoming city attorney, said that Davison’s drug prosecution alternative is “pretty ridiculous” because it requires people who are using fentanyl to get an evaluation to see if they have a drug problem. “If they get charged with smoking fentanyl, all that’s required is for them to agree to a SODA order placed on them, and then having to get an assessment that tells them whether or not they have a fentanyl addiction. That is wasting our public dollars.”
The city attorney’s office disagrees, claiming the approach has improved public safety. “Drug overdoses in Seattle have declined since the law was enacted and the areas hit hardest by open-air drug markets have seen some meaningful improvement,” Robinson said. “There is more work to be done, but Seattle is safer today than it was four years ago as measured by crime statistics and public opinion polls.”
Items SPD recovered from a felony drug bust (photo via Seattle Police Department).
In September, SPD’s blog featured a flurry of posts about drug seizures and arrests, with accompanying photos of baggies of drugs, cash, and confiscated guns—part of the surge of felony arrests that Harrell said contributed to the recent reduction in overdose deaths.
But a closer look at the cases reveals that many of these arrests were for small-time deals by people who are likely drug users themselves.
A post on September 29 celebrated SPD arresting a 34-year old man found with a “handgun, $203 cash, and 0.9 grams of Fentanyl.”
A post on September 24 described the arrest of a man on First Hill who had a gun and about 147 grams of cocaine, meth, fentanyl and heroin (about the weight of a deck of cards) who was booked into jail on gun and narcotics violations.
Another September post officers nabbing a suspect and confiscating a whopping $62 in cash, 4 grams of meth, and a set of brass knuckles.
SPD did not respond to requests for comment on the increase in drug distribution arrests.
Evidence suggests that disrupting the illicit drug supply can actually lead to an increased risk of overdose, as drug users switch to lesser-known dealers who may be selling a more toxic supply.
Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina whose work on harm reduction earned him a 2025 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, said attributing the decline in overdoses to arrests “seems really naive.”
“There’s no reliable evidence that drug seizures of this magnitude lead to declines in overdose,” Dasgupta said. A peer-reviewed study of trends in drug arrests and overdose rates in Indianapolis, published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2023, found that on average, one week after a police drug seizure, the number of fatal overdoses doubled within a 500 meter radius of the arrest.
“I think the way to interpret these data [about overdoses in Seattle] more scientifically is that overdoses are dropping despite the felony arrests,” said Dasgupta, who was involved in the Indianapolis study. “It’s not the other way around.”
Lisa Daugaard, the co-director of Purpose Dignity Action and creator of the LEAD program (for which she, too, received a genius grant) said it’s ineffective to focus on small-time drug dealers, pointing to research by Dasgupta and other scientists.
“Disrupting harmful dynamics has an obvious superficial appeal, but in a time of ultra-toxic illicit drug supply, many interventions that seem appealing actually are counterproductive,” Daugaard said.
Dasgupta, who worked with harm reduction experts in Seattle while conducting his research, says the decline in Seattle’s fatal overdose rate is likely the result of four trends that are happening across the country. First, he says, illicit drug manufacturers are making the drug supply less toxic by improving quality. “This is a market correction, independent of any law enforcement action,” Dasgupta said.
Second, Gen Z is less inclined to use opioids than its predecessors. “We have a million and a half kids who lost parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents to an overdose in the United States,” Dasgupta said. “That experience of going to those funerals, I guarantee you, is way more likely to change their behaviors and attitudes towards opioids than any educational campaign.”
Third, Dasgupta said, drug users have learned not to use alone, and when they have the resources available, to get their drugs tested for potency.
And fourth, Dasgupta credits “all the community-based interventions that are going on. Clinic-based interventions have greatly expanded availability of addiction treatment as well as naloxone, especially having that be accessible with as little red tape as possible.”
The county public health department is on pace to double the amount of naloxone it distributes through community-based organizations in 2025 over last year, with 30,000 doses distributed in the first half of this year. The department has also trained more than 2,700 people in how to administer naloxone since 2024. In addition, the agency has installed vending machines with free naloxone at five sites across the county.
Finegood says community groups have reported back to Public Health that naloxone from those vending machines have reversed at least 800 overdoses, and 85 percent of drug users told county researchers that they now keep naloxone around when they use.
Making treatment and medications available to those who want to quit using or reduce their drug use has also been a priority, Finegood said. “We’re continuing to work on lowering those barriers so people can provide access.”
A fleet of methadone vans run by the county are helping bring treatment closer to where people typically use drugs.
And in August, the Downtown Emergency Service Center opened the Opioid Recovery & Care Access (ORCA) center, which provides 24/7 care to people recovering from overdoses.
Public Health, Finegood said, has also made an injectable version of buprenorphine much more accessible by setting up a hotline where users can easily and immediately get a prescription when they’re ready. Finegood also praised the city’s first-in-the-nation pilot buprenorphine program, in which Seattle Fire Department paramedics can administer the drug after overdose to anyone who requests it.
Kristin Hanson, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Fire Department, said first responders have administered 160 doses of buprenorphine since the program began in 2024.
Finegood says continuing to focus on making access to treatment easier has been a key pillar in Public Health’s efforts to stop the deaths. “We need to continue to do what we know is working, and what evidence shows is working: which is lowering barriers to care,” he said. “Because people want care, people want help. We should be giving people access to care when they’re in a place where they’re willing to receive it, and giving them what they want.”
