OPIOID CRISIS SEATTLE – IT’S THE NALOXONE, AGAIN
Direct, incontrovertible evidence that naloxone accounts for fatal overdose reductions triggers desperate damage control, mystification to protect failed, lethal systems of care
by Clark Miller
Published December 12, 2025
As elsewhere and everywhere, consistently, the evidence is direct and unassailable, without need for statistical analysis or hypothesis testing: every credible report of a naloxone unit used to reverse a potentially fatal opioid overdose is, on its face, a life saved, an opioid crisis death prevented.
And across diverse locations and U.S. states, consistently, the magnitude of increases of those saves, year-to-year – even when estimates of saves are reduced by half or more to account for individuals who experience mulitple instances of reversals – more than account for reductions in opioid overdose deaths.
That leaves no reduced deaths to be attributed to the expert “treatments” including opioid crisis medical cures that are established as driving a worsening epidemic and require protective lies fabricated by compromised “experts” and media servants to distract attention from their lethality.
But, as we’ve seen, that’s working less and less well for America’s medical/media/expert collusion.
From Seattle and King County public health agencies –
Overdose is the leading cause of preventable injury death in King County, but an easy-to-use nasal spray called naloxone is saving lives. When someone overdoses on opioids like fentanyl or prescription painkillers, their breathing slows or stops. Naloxone, sometimes also called Narcan, quickly reverses the effects of opioids, often restoring normal breathing in 2-3 minutes.
Through strong community partnerships and innovative approaches, Public Health’s distribution of this life-saving tool to community-based organizations in 2025 is on pace to double that distributed in 2024. This work is funded in part through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Overdose Data to Action Grant. …
Overdose prevention takes compassion, knowledge, and action from all of us. National data showed that in 2023, a friend, family member or other bystander was present for nearly 40% of overdose deaths. This means that in many cases, overdoses can be reversed and lives saved if more people in our community have access to naloxone, know what an overdose looks like, and know what to do.
An overdose is a medical emergency. When someone isn’t breathing and can’t get enough oxygen to their brain, every minute matters. That’s why it’s important to keep naloxone on hand and easily accessible. Through partnership with Public Health, a growing number of sites throughout King County provide free, anonymous access to naloxone through vending machines, newspaper-style boxes, and opioid rescue kits that can be mounted on a wall like an AED.
Public Health’s five vending machines—located at Peer Seattle, Peer Kent, Compass Day Center, the Maleng Regional Justice Center, and YouthCare Orion Center—have dispensed over 10,700 overdose prevention items. Vending machine users reported using naloxone they got from a vending machine to respond to over 800 overdoses to date.
“We have seen a dramatic reduction in 2025 in the number of overdoses at our site,” said Veronica Prentice, Day Services Coordinator at Compass Day Center. “Before our vending machine was placed, we would have staff responding to several overdoses every month. In 2025, we have seen fewer than 10 this entire year.”
In 2024, Public Health expanded low barrier naloxone distribution to 19 additional sites including housing programs, day centers, shelters, food banks, and other service providers to make naloxone immediately available in case someone overdoses. Each of the 19 locations installed easily accessible, anonymous naloxone distribution boxes—sometimes called a ‘nalox box’. Some sites installed a box on every floor, and others installed cabinets in common areas such as a lobby or laundry room.
Since 2024, Public Health has trained over 2,700 community members to recognize and respond to an overdose and distributed over 1,600 naloxone kits at community-based trainings and events. These trainings equip staff at partner organizations and community members with knowledge and tools to respond to an overdose and talk to the people in their lives about ways to reduce their overdose risk, including available resources for recovery and treatment.
[emphasis added]
That seems pretty clear:
The intensive, targeted, naloxone distribution, outreach, and training efforts having begun in 2024, as described here,
– corresponding to sudden, crisis-shifting drops in fatal overdoses is a doubling, “in 2025 is on pace to double that distributed in 2024″
– of effective provision, along with training and outreach, to community members proximate to high-risk opioid use (where every second counts) of the emergency intervention known to prevent those fatalities,
– with confirming accounts, including reports from a set of vending machines only, of reversal (fatalities prevented) of “over 800 overdoses to date”
– corresponding to direct, on-the-ground reports at a single day services center of reduction in observed opioid ODs from “several” to less than one per month,
– and with no reports or accounts of fewer non-fatal overdoses or of high-risk users successfully using treatments of any kind, instead of increased demand for and use of naloxone to reduce fatalities from persistent high-risk use = gold standard treatment failure.
That’s the leaking, necessarily mystified, story everywhere.
But wait! That must not be true! That cannot be seen as true, must not be exposed as additional confirmation of the lethality of American expert gold standard treatments increasingly provided over decades of a worsening crisis, gold standard treatments that, per top experts, have, in fact, been available essentially everywhere for decades in unrestricted supply.
That risk of exposure demands mystification of the obvious
as desperately required, and that’s where America’s top, celebrated, trusted experts come in.
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. …
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 increased access 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. …
[emphasis added]
[Right, yes, we do need to do this.]
“increased access to treatment”
The gold standard treatment that has been increasingly provided over decades of persistently worsening drug crises? That “treatment“? America’s addiction treatment system that has failed over decades became suddenly, astonishingly effective beggining about 2 years ago in Seattle? Coincidentally at the same time that emergency fatality-reversing naloxone interventions succussfully accounted for any and all reductions in deaths?
[Yeah, I know, I know.]
“and buprenorphine“
“Bupe”, right! The bupe that has functioned for decades as a common currency on the street for illicit opioids, now fentanyl?
The buprenorphine that’s established as fueling the worsening crisis?
and “increased access to injectable buprenorphine”?
Like the Sublocade used in Seattle? Experts agree: it’s a game changer. So that must be helping, maybe explains the decrease in deaths. Right?
Huh! So it turns out that the criminal justice interventions in King County and Seattle have been no more effective than expert gold standard treatments.
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. …
Evans called the fact that just six people prosecuted under the drug use law went through treatment or evaluation a “huge failure.” …
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. …
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.
The evidence so far is not cooperating with expert cover stories. That requires additional mystification, of the type mastered and employed in NPR reports, as here and here and here and here.
From the same PUBLICOLA report –
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.”
[emphasis added]
“Dasgupta” is Nabarun Dasgupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, whose thoughts on opioid crisis trends are featured in posts here and here.
Astute readers will notice that naloxone – the one factor not only supported by evidence, but direct, incontrovertible evidence of accounting for fatal OD reductions – is added at the end, as an afterthought.
Let’s take a look!
“making the drug supply less toxic by improving quality”
Please take a few minutes for an internet search for ongoing trends in purity, toxicity, and instability of the illicit opioid street supply and any concerns related to that.
Right.
There is no evidence offered here and none available to support this conjecture helpful distraction. Nor is there evidence to support that to whatever extent there may be such an effect, it is causally related to a single reduced opioid overdose death. Fentanyl seems to be lethal enough without being more clean.
“Gen Z is less inclined to use opioids”
There is no evidence offered here and none available to support this conjecture helpful distraction. Nor is there evidence to support that to whatever extent there may be such an effect, it is causally related to a single reduced opioid overdose death.
In fact, on the supposition that disturbing, emotionally jarring and injurious experiences of the type pointed to are having effects, we know, it is established, that just the opposite effects are predicted.
Growing up in a household affected by drug use, overdose, and associated psychosocial and developmental stressors is the strongest predictor we know of for future problem drug use.
“drug users have learned not to use alone”
That is true, covered in numerous posts at ACD, and points directly to the role of naloxone in decreasing fatal overdoses.
And, “when they have the resources available, to get their drugs tested for potency.”
For high-risk, “street” opioid users and for almost all users, this does not warrant comment. It is sufficient to note that if control of purity and potency were, in practice, protective factors, then there would be some evidence to support benefit from “safer supply” approaches rather than their established lethality.
“expanded availability of addiction treatment”
There is no evidence offered here and none available to support this conjecture necessary distraction.
Again:
The gold standard addiction treatment that has been increasingly provided over decades of persistently worsening drug crises? That “treatment“? America’s addiction treatment system that has failed over decades became suddenly, astonishingly effective beginning about 2 years ago in Seattle? Coincidentally, at the same time that emergency fatality-reversing naloxone interventions successfully accounted for any and all reductions in deaths?
[Yes, I know. It’s tedious. But important.]
And the naloxone, added in this expert analysis as an afterthought?
In contrast to the evidence-free and invalidated status of the protective rationalizations offered, the differences could not be more stark. Again:
As elsewhere and everywhere, consistently, the evidence is direct and unassailable, without need for statistical analysis or hypothesis testing: every credible report of a naloxone unit used to reverse a potentially fatal opioid overdose is, on its face, a life saved, an opioid crisis death prevented.
And across diverse locations and U.S. states, consistently, the magnitude of increases of those saves, year-to-year – even when estimates of saves are reduced by half or more to account for individuals who experience multiple instances of reversals – more than account for reductions in opioid overdose deaths.
That leaves no reduced deaths to be attributed to the expert “treatments” including opioid crisis medical cures that are established as driving a worsening epidemic and require protective lies fabricated by compromised “experts” and media servants to distract attention from their lethality.
