King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray are bringing together a wide range of experts to recommend immediate actions to confront the region’s growing heroin and prescription opiate epidemic. From the announcement:
More people in King County now enter detox for heroin than alcohol. In 2014, opiate overdose deaths were the highest ever recorded in King County — more than triple the number of deaths in 2009.
“Addiction to heroin and prescription pain killers is devastating families in every one of our communities — sparing no age, race, gender, neighborhood or income level,” said Executive Constantine. “Our region has a proud tradition of working together across disciplines to achieve a common goal. It’s now time for us to apply that same sense of shared purpose to confront this epidemic.”
“I have declared a State of Emergency to address homelessness, but I am told by our outreach workers and officers that hundreds of the people who live on our streets are struggling with addiction,” said Mayor Ed Murray. “If we are ever to get people into permanent housing, we must do more on chemical dependency treatment. That means asking the tough questions about how we improve our response to the national heroin epidemic and resulting property crime and disorder.”
Magnolia has been affected by?homelessness and addiction on our own streets.
You can read more about the plan here.