I know many folks have many thoughts on the local TV news program that aired this weekend asserting that again that Seattle is dying ... (yeah, it's a thread)

But I wanted to focus on one particular thing contained in this promo tweet for the program ... https://twitter.com/komonews/status/1337561630876467200

It's this phrase: "drug culture that fests in Seattle." And before I go on, let me say addiction is a terrible, insidious problem that affects so many folks and too often is treated as a crime rather than as a medical problem ...

I feel lucky that addiction doesn't run in my immediate family, so it hasn't touched me much personally. All sympathy to those who've lost folks to addiction, who have struggled with it, or are helping others who are struggling with it ...

OK, now back to that phrase "drug culture that fests in Seattle." Relatively wide use of opiates has been an open secret in Seattle for decades; the grunge era around here merely put the spotlight on it. ...

So blaming Seattle's current leadership (and believe me, I don't agree with the city council on a lot of things) for drug use around here is laughable. It's unfortunately been part of this region for a long, long time ...

Also, I live near the rural edge of Snohomish County, and I can tell you drug use in places like Granite Falls is just as bad as it is in any urban center. But if Seattle's "drug culture" was actually completely out of control, as some folks like to proclaim ...

Then the number of opiate overdose deaths should be through the roof, especially compared to other places, right? Well ...

This is where having stats helps. And there are LOTS of stats on opiate use and deaths, though they lag by a year or more (COVID-19 has helped slow down the release of some reports). Still, they show where King County and Washington as a whole are ...

So, for King County (including Seattle) in 2018, the
number of heroin and prescription opioid-involved deaths
was stable compared to 2017. "The longer-term trends were more dynamic, with heroin-involved deaths increasing and prescription opioid-involved deaths decreasing." ...

The overall number of opiate-involved deaths in King County during 2018 was 277 deaths, including 156 deaths that involved heroin and 100 that involved prescription opioids, the report states.

The UW reported that the statewide rate of opiate-related drug deaths for 2018 was 10.4 per 100,000 state residents. That makes it the most deadly drug type, well above both meth and cocaine. So then I looked at where the state ranks nationwide in opiate deaths ...

According to the CDC, Washington is in the group of states with the lowest death rates from drug overdoses. Their stats put our death rates from ALL drugs at 14.8 per 100,000 residents in 2018. ...

But with our "drug culture that fests" here, Washington state's rate should be near the top in the nation, right? Uh, no. Washington's rate of death from ALL drug overdoses is 34th. States at the top of the list have death rates THREE TIMES HIGHER than ours. ...

Also, many of those states (Alabama, Utah, Oklahoma) probably wouldn't be described as having a "drug culture" or liberal city leaders. (By the way, that chart is here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm) ...

Again, addiction is terrible. And reading through these drug death stats is sad. And we need to attack addiction problems in new ways instead of just arresting addicts too often ...

But to say Seattle is uniquely "out of control" when it comes to opiate use and deaths flies in the face of stats gathered on both the statewide and national level. And amping up rhetoric to either scare viewers or reinforce existing views doesn't seem responsible. <fin>

P.S.: Shoot! I thought I fixed the typo. As you can see at the CDC link, Washington state is in the SECOND-lowest (out of five) group of drug-death rates, not the lowest. But all the specific stats in those tweets are correct.