A record number of people died from opioid overdoses in Kitsap County in 2023, according to preliminary data published by the Kitsap Public Health District this month, marking the fifth consecutive year the death toll has increased.
As of July 8, data found that 65 Kitsap residents died of opioid overdoses last year, accounting for over 80% of all illegal drug overdoses. That number is up from 57 deaths in 2022.
Last year, Kitsap had about 25 fatal overdoses for every 100,000 people, nearly double what it was in 2021. Meanwhile per every 1,000 EMS responses, over 13% were for a suspected overdose, up from around 7% in 2022.
Final results for 2023 won’t be published until early fall, but health officials say they are unlikely to change significantly and demonstrate a need for more prevention efforts.
“Kitsap is experiencing a growing drug epidemic similar to the state and the country,” Siri Kushner, a division director for the health district, wrote in an email. “As overdoses become more prevalent in our community, there is a greater need to support and coordinate response and prevention efforts and reduce barriers to accessing evidence-based treatment and prevention services.”
Fatal overdoses in Kitsap County have grown annually since 2019, but that growth has been more pronounced since the COVID-19 pandemic. Health officials attribute that primarily to the rise in fentanyl, a synthetic opioid about 50 times stronger than heroin, and one that is cheap, highly addictive and often laced into other street drugs.
The state’s opioid overdose death rate nearly doubled between 2019 and 2022, mostly due to fentanyl, according to the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute at the University of Washington. Fentanyl is now involved in the majority of the state’s overdoses.
In Kitsap, fatal overdoses held relatively constant in the four years prior to 2020, hovering between 22 or 26. A significant spike came in 2020, when 33 people died. Now, deaths from opioids have increased 150% from their pre-pandemic high.
“We saw a huge increase, especially last year,” said Sara Marez-Fields, executive director of the Bremerton-based substance-use treatment provider Agape Unlimited. Part of the reason for the increase, she said, is the accessibility and low cost of fentanyl.
“I could go pick up enough change in my parking lot and buy fentanyl,” she said. “It’s going as low as 70 cents to a buck-fifty per pill.”
Lance Walters, a Salvation Army captain, told the Kitsap Sun earlier this year that overdoses from fentanyl have become a near-daily reality for staff at the Salvation Army shelter in downtown Bremerton.
“Fentanyl really tears up lives,” he said in May. “It saddens me to see people addicted to drugs, period, but fentanyl has a different grasp on people.”
Funding allocated to Kitsap
As overdoses continue to rise, a surge of new funding is beginning to flow into Kitsap County, primarily from a flurry of lawsuits filed against companies who helped fuel the opioid crisis.
In total, Kitsap County and its four cities are set to bring in over $18.4 million in opioid settlement dollars, according to calculations by the Attorney General’s Office in April. The first of those dollars are just beginning to reach county officials, and will continue to trickle in over the next two decades.
Kitsap County leaders allocated the first of its opioid dollars, stemming from a $518 million settlement in 2022 between the state and three drug companies, on primary prevention programs through the Kitsap Public Health District and Kitsap County Human Services.
The health district will use the funds to create a countrywide strategy around opioid use prevention, hire a health educator and collect opioid-related data. Meanwhile, Kitsap County launched a youth-oriented opioid prevention program in April.
In March, the county received installments from another settlement, this time with pharmacies Walgreens, Allergan, Walmart, CVS and Teva. That will bring in $1.85 million to the three county region of Kitsap, Cllalum and Jefferson.
There has also been a deliberate effort to expand access to naloxone, a life-saving drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose. The Salish Behavioral Health Organization distributed over 1,300 naloxone kits to partners and community members between March and May.
Salish has also been mounting naloxone cabinets to a variety of areas throughout the region. The boxes give people free and anonymous access to the life-saving medication. So far, 14 cabinets have been placed, including five in Kitsap. Another 25 cabinets are on order.
Signs of improvement
Both locally and across the county, there are some signs that efforts to combat the opioid crisis could be bearing fruit.
Despite grim results in Kitsap last year, overdose deaths nationally declined for the first time in five years, the New York Times reported. The drop was mostly attributed to a decrease in fentanyl deaths.
Declines were largely seen across the East Coast and Midwest, where fentanyl was introduced into the illegal drug market years before it spread out west. Most of the West Coast, including Washington, saw an increase in overdoses deaths last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Across the Sound in Seattle, overdose response calls for the first six months of the year are down compared to last year, the Seattle Times reported this week.
In Kitsap, the number of suspected opioid responses from EMS are still higher than they were last year, according to health district data. But the first three months of 2024 saw responses drop compared to the prior quarter — the first quarter-over-quarter decline in about two years.
Jeff Wallis, of the Kitsap Medical Examiner's Office, said there have been 28 deaths where opioid involvement is either confirmed or suspected so far this year.
Lt. Theron Rahier, medical services officer for North Kitsap Fire and Rescue, said they had responded to 18 overdose-related calls last year. So far in 2024, they have responded to four. However, Rahier cautioned that those results may be misleading. More people have access to personal naloxone, and may be overdosing without needing to call 911, meaning those overdoses are not being reported.
"Just because we're not responding, doesn't mean it is not happening," he said.
Marez-Fields said while the positivity rate for fentanyl is increasing, she has not filed a critical incident report for an opioid overdose since March.
That again does not mean overdoses aren’t happening. Many are reported months after the fact because the clients they work with are mobile and can go long periods without speaking to staff members. But it does offer some cautious optimism.
“I’m hoping it's a positive sign,” Marez-Fields said. “But I think we need more time and data collected.”
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