Washington overdose deaths decline after years of growth, data show
Washington is showing promise in its work to combat the epidemic of drug overdose deaths that has ravaged the state and country in recent years.
In 2024, fatal overdoses in the state dropped nearly 11% from the previous year, from 3,512 to 3,137, according to preliminary data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
'There's been not a lot of good news in this space, and this is good news,' said Dr. Herbert Duber, regional medical officer at the state Department of Health. 'I think that we need to get more time, though, to see how it sticks.'
Last year's total is still nearly 14% higher than the deaths recorded in 2022.
Washington saw the downward overdose trend reversed in the last few months of 2024, noted Duber. The past month has also seen a significant increase.
Washington's decrease last year was far below the national average of more than 25%. Only two states saw upticks in overdose deaths: Nevada and South Dakota.
Nationally, overdose remains the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 44, health officials say.
Fatal overdoses had been rising quickly in Washington. In 2019, fewer than 1,300 residents died, according to state data.
Highly potent fentanyl drove that rise, along with increased drug use during the pandemic. In 2019, just over 300 people in Washington died from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. By 2023, that had skyrocketed to more than 2,600, according to the state Department of Health.
Federal health officials cite the Overdose Data to Action program as a way to continue reducing deaths through statistic-guided prevention efforts. The state Department of Health, as well as the King and Snohomish County health departments, have received federal money under Overdose Data to Action.
In Washington, Duber sees increasing access to treatment as a catalyst for the improvement seen last year, especially to the medication buprenorphine meant to treat opioid addiction. Duber, an emergency department physician, will prescribe Suboxone, a medication containing both buprenorphine and naloxone that reduces opioid withdrawal symptoms.
'There's just been an increasing level of comfort and education and engagement on opioids, trying to figure out a way where the healthcare community can really impact this epidemic,' Duber said.
The state is looking to keep the progress going. The two-year state budget Gov. Bob Ferguson signed last week included money for a new hotline to facilitate access to services and medication like buprenorphine. The earliest that could be launched is in September, a Department of Health spokesperson said.
The goal is to lower barriers as much as possible to give people the chance to get treatment.
But the so-called 'big, beautiful bill' the U.S. House passed last month could threaten the progress. The Medicaid program for low-income Americans is the largest payer for opioid use disorder treatment in Washington, according to the state Health Care Authority.
The Republican-backed legislation proposes cutting Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, a move that could cost Washington about $2 billion over the next four years and force around 194,000 to lose coverage, local leaders have warned.
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San Francisco Chronicle
25 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bald eagles hatched in Piedmont. It turned into a neighborhood reckoning with patriotism
Lo Bloustein was looking through the viewfinder of her camera to a bald eagle nest in the distance when she noticed tears rolling down the face of the woman next to her. Bloustein pulled the stranger into her arms, Bloustein's own eyes now shimmering with tears. The two women had never met before that moment but were brought together by the arrival of two bald eagle fledglings in a massive nest visible from Moraga Avenue in Piedmont. Tomiko Eya, a resident of the neighborhood, wasn't crying because she was moved by the birds nested in a eucalyptus tree, but because she was concerned about the state of the country. American iconography like the American flag and the bald eagle have long been fraught symbols for some. And as President Donald Trump continues to dismantle the rights of marginalized communities like transgender people and immigrants, long-held symbols of the federal government and freedom feel especially loaded for some Americans. 'I can't believe we're going backwards,' Eya said, looking out toward the baby birds that will grow to resemble the iconic visage of the national bird. Put on the endangered species list in 1967, bald eagles have made a modest comeback in the Bay Area. But, observers say, this is the first time in recent memory that a bald eagle pair in the area has successfully hatched their eggs. In 2023, a mating pair attempted to nest in Alameda but never produced offspring. On a sunny day in late July, there were almost 30 people standing on the sidewalk next to Eya and Bloustein. Cars slowed in front of the crowd, their drivers befuddled by the streetside gathering. Bloustein beckoned for them to pull over and come take a look through her cameras, which had been focused toward the nest in a eucalyptus tree for hours. Since early April, when a neighbor spotted the twin silhouettes of the hatchlings, the neighborhood has been captivated by the family of four. Now, a fledgling covered in brown feathers — their renowned white feathers won't come in for a few years — stood at the edge of the nest, stretching its wings. For some onlookers like Eya and Bloustein, the birds — and their place in American iconography — bring up difficult feelings as a political divide deepens between citizens. The last few years have seen a flood of protests for racial justice, immigrant rights and trans rights. And while some protesters want to reclaim the American flag for the left, white supremacists and conservatives have also raised the American flag as a symbol of nationalism. 'It's the same with the flag — how do you feel looking at the flag right now?' Bloustein said to herself. 'Rage and fear. I have such a hard time right now with America in general.' The bald eagle has been a symbol of America since 1782, when it was first featured on the Great Seal of the United States. Over the years, the eagle has come to adorn federal and state buildings, money and military uniforms. But it didn't become the national bird until 2024, when former President Joe Biden gave it that official designation. As a youth, Eya attended schools in Chicago and Los Angeles, where she said the bald eagle seemed exclusively symbolic of the federal government. But her family history has complicated her view of American iconography. Eya's father was incarcerated alongside other Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II at Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas — another state where bald eagles are known to hatch and raise their young. Her father's incarceration and the racial discrimination he faced after the war made him lean into patriotism, she said. 'It was such a horrible experience for him,' she said. 'And it made him more conservative, if you can believe it. He wanted to be as American as he could be.' That trauma trickled down to Eya, too, but transformed her into a self-identified radical from a young age. 'My parents wanted me to be as white as I could be, to shut my mouth, which was very hard for me,' she said. 'I've never been that quiet.' Before her father passed, Eya gave him an American flag for his birthday. But she'd never have one at her own home because she associates it with Japanese incarceration, slavery and other acts of state-sanctioned violence. Still, she doesn't want to put blame on a wild animal for something humans have projected onto it. Her eyes shimmered with tears as she looked out at the tree, where one of the fledglings was spreading its wings. 'I sort of separate it out because I don't want to put any negativity on the eagles,' Eya said. Bloustein, who lives in San Francisco, agreed. 'When Trump was elected, I started going out to Holly Park at dawn because I needed to see the sunrise and the birds — things that the government couldn't f— up,' she said.
San Francisco Chronicle
25 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Will UCLA wilt like an Ivy? Trump extortion threat is the ultimate test
California's public universities have the chance to do something elite Ivy League schools didn't have the guts to: stand up to Donald Trump's latest extortion plot. Trump is demanding $1 billion in California taxpayer dollars to avoid a lawsuit over the administration's finding that the campus broke the law in its handling of antisemitism claims last year. Presumably the payout would mean the administration would also agree to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding it recently yanked. (Californians already pay $83 billion more in taxes than we receive in federal benefits as a state.) Plus, according to terms of the proposed settlement as CNN reported Friday, Trump wants to prohibit overnight demonstrations, require UCLA to discontinue race- and ethnicity-based scholarships, and provide a resolution monitor with admissions data. UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a letter to the university community this week that $584 million 'is suspended and at risk.' The loss of those funds, Frenk said, would 'be devastating for UCLA and for Americans across the nation.' The Trump administration has already blocked more than $5 billion in funding from at least seven private universities: Harvard ($2.3 billion), Cornell ($1 billion), Northwestern ($790 million), Brown ($510 million), Columbia ($400 million), Duke ($108 million) and the University of Pennsylvania ($175 million). San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, a Harvard Law grad, assessed the situation best. He described Trump's shakedown as 'classic mob boss behavior' and said 'far too many major institutions are caving to this fascist.' 'The idea that UCLA would pay Trump tribute (California taxpayer dollars), adopt his bigoted policies, or give him even an ounce of control of the University's operations turns my stomach and should turn the stomach of every Californian. I'm confident UCLA will not enter into such an agreement, since doing so would violate California law, would violate our state's core values, and would be straight up morally unacceptable,' Wiener wrote in a statement. Gov. Gavin Newsom also urged the UC to stay strong, unlike the paper tigers of the Ivy League, against what he described Friday as Trump 'threaten(ing) us through extortion with a billion-dollar fine unless we do his bidding.' 'We're not Brown, we're not Columbia, and I'm not going to be governor if we act like that, period full stop,' Newsom said Thursday in San Francisco when I asked him whether the UC should cut a deal with Trump. 'I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn't happen. There's principles, there's right and wrong, and we'll do the right thing. And what President Trump is doing is wrong, and everybody knows it.' On Friday, after the DOJ floated the $1 billion ransom, Newsom doubled down: 'We will not be complicit in this kind of attack on academic freedom, on this extraordinary public institution. We are not like some of those other institutions that have followed a different path.' California has always billed itself as a backstop against Trump. But it's hard to imagine a more clear and urgent test of whether it will live up to that role. There is a lot at stake here, as all 10 UC campuses rank among the top research universities in the world, according to the U.S. News & World Report 2025-26 Best Global Universities ranking in June. UC researchers produce four new inventions a day and the system is home to nearly 300 of the world's top researchers. Fueled by federal funding, UC researchers conduct 8% of all academic research in the U.S. (Full disclosure: I'm the very proud father of a UC Davis graduate. Go, Aggies!) Top UC campuses usually land near the Ivies in rankings of top colleges and compete for the nation's elite students. They frequently outperform the more expensive Ivies in terms of a financial return on investment, according to a 2022 study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. 'They have the power and the position and the funding to hold the line and serve as an example to universities,' Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Irvine and general counsel to the American Association of University Professors, told WBUR. Ivy Leaguers, meanwhile, love to brag about how many A-list lawyers they mint — including eight of the nine current Supreme Court Justices. But what good is all that power if they couldn't tap their elite alums to fight back against Trump? Instead, they wilted. They did what the wealthy often do when confronted with a difficult situation: They bought their way out. Columbia paid $220 million in 'tribute' to Don Donald. Brown paid $50 million to the state of Rhode Island, adopted the federal government's definition of 'male' and 'female,' and promised to remove any consideration of race from the admissions process, according to NPR. Harvard is willing to pay up to $500 million, the New York Times reported, a figure Harvard denied. The Ivy grads among you might be asking: Why doesn't the UC just pay Trump to go away? First, UC, which relies heavily on public funding, doesn't have the deep pockets the privately funded Ivies do. And there are strict rules on what the UC can tap its endowment for. (Paying off mob bosses is not on the list.) 'Withdrawals are limited to a portion of interest earnings from the funds and only a limited amount of annual earned income can be withdrawn and spent in any given year. Those funds are not sufficient to replace the state and federal funds that UC relies on for its day-to-day operating costs,' according to the UC. But there's a more existential reason the system cannot pay this ransom: As anyone familiar with a mob shakedown knows, once you start paying for 'protection,' you can't stop. Even more insidious is that Trump is cloaking his shakedown in the guise of addressing antisemitism on campus. To appease him, the Ivy League agreed to take certain Trump-approved steps to address such allegations. 'Trump is now using Jews as human shields to achieve political goals having nothing to do with antisemitism,' said Wiener, a co-chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus who has faced antisemitic attacks while in office. 'Trump doesn't give a damn about Jews or antisemitism. He has antisemites in his Administration, he tried to elect a Nazi-aligned government in Germany, he dined with Nazi Nick Fuentes, and he spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. … Revoking science research funding in the name of the Jews is utterly is making Jews less safe, and he's making it harder for us to fight actual antisemitism.' So the next move is yours, UC. The system has long competed with the Ivies for students, talent and prestige. Now it could have the ultimate, well, trump card: It could say it refused to buckle when the very future of higher education was on the line.
Atlantic
26 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Give the Moon a Big, Beautiful Base
No one can say that the Trump administration is entirely against alternative energy. In his first bold policy stroke as NASA's interim head, Sean Duffy has directed the agency to put a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor on the moon by decade's end. This is not a lark. If humanity means to establish a permanent settlement on the moon, nuclear power will almost certainly be essential to its operation. And a lunar base may well be the most wondrous achievement in space exploration that people reading this will see during their lifetime. The moon has gone unvisited, except by robots, for more than 50 years, and as of several months ago, it seemed as though Americans would be staying away from it for a good while longer. President Donald Trump was taking cues from Elon Musk, who seemed inclined to shelve the plan to put Americans back on the lunar surface and focus instead on an all-out sprint to Mars. But Musk has since fallen out of favor, and last month, congressional Republicans secured a funding boost for the moon program. NASA astronauts are now scheduled to return to the moon in 2027, and if all goes well, they will be landing on it regularly, starting in the early 2030s. Each crew will carry parts of a small base that can grow piece by piece into a living space for a few people. The astronauts will also take a pair of vehicles for expeditions—a little rover that they can use for local jaunts in their space suits, and a larger, pressurized one that will allow them to go on 500-mile regolith road trips in street clothes. A base on the moon would be more democratic than those that Musk and his acolytes have advocated building on Mars. Given shorter travel times, a greater number of people would be able to experience its otherworldly ashen plains. Their homesick calls to Earth would have only second-long delays, as opposed to minutes for a call from Mars. But even a small encampment on the lunar surface is going to require considerable energy. Temperatures dip to –410 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, and human bodies will need to keep cozy amid that deep chill. The International Space Station runs on solar power, but that won't be enough on most of the moon, where nights last for 14 days. Some of the agency's other off-world projects are powered by raw plutonium. Hunks of it sit inside the Mars rovers, for instance, radiating heat that the wheeled robots convert into electricity. These hot rocks are also encased inside NASA's probes to the outer planets and their moons. Without plutonium, the two Voyager spacecrafts couldn't continue to send data back to Earth as they recede from the solar system. The moon base will need more than a radioactive rock. It will need a reactor that actually splits atoms, like the one that Duffy has proposed this week. Even if that reactor were to fail, the resulting meltdown wouldn't present the same risks to humans that it would on Earth. The moon is already a radiation-rich environment, and it has no wind to blow the reactor's most dangerous effluvia around; the material would simply fall to the ground. Duffy framed his push to get the reactor in place as a matter of national security. NASA's program to return to the moon, called Artemis, will be an international effort, with several countries contributing pieces of the final base. (Japan's space agency has tapped Toyota to design the large, pressurized lunar vehicle.) But when the United States invited Russia to join, Vladimir Putin declined. He has instead opted to help out with a larger Chinese lunar base, which is supposed to include a nuclear reactor 10 times as powerful as the one that Duffy announced. Last month, Bhavya Lal, who served as an associate administrator at NASA during the Biden administration and is now a professor at RAND, and her fellow aerospace expert Roger Myers released a report arguing that a county could sneakily establish a sovereign zone on the moon in defiance of the Outer Space Treaty just by building a reactor. For instance, the Chinese could insist on a buffer around theirs for the sake of nuclear safety, and use that to keep Americans away from desirable ice-rich craters nearby. Lal and Myers seem to have captured the new administration's attention: Duffy's new directive ordering the development of the reactor specifically mentioned this risk. If worry over Chinese lunar land grabs is the motivation for a moon base, so much the better. Space exploration often requires a geopolitical spur. And if NASA can build this first small lunar settlement, something grander could follow close behind. Once the agency has mastered the construction of a 100-kilowatt lunar nuclear reactor, it should have little trouble scaling up to larger ones that can support tens, or even hundreds, of people—in bases of the size that now exist on Antarctica. Some space agencies have reportedly discussed building hydroponic greenhouses and other elaborate structures inside the voluminous caves that run beneath the moon's Sea of Tranquility. All of this infrastructure could enable some serious lunar dystopias. The moon's surface could become an industrial hellscape, pocked with mining operations where robots and human serfs extract platinum and titanium for use in advanced electronics back on Earth. Or the Outer Space Treaty could break down and the moon could become a heavily militarized zone—even a staging ground for nuclear weapons. But an inhabited moon could also be a global commons for research. Both the U.S. and China have developed designs for large radio telescopes on the lunar dark side, where they'd be shielded from Earth's radio noise and would greatly aid the search for signals from distant civilizations. In one design, robots would spread a metal mesh from a crater's center to its rim, turning its concave surface into a natural radio dish. One can imagine an astronomer at a lunar base, peering out from a porthole, seeing the Earth shining in the sky, picking out its individual oceans and continents, and knowing that on the moon's opposite side, a giant ear would be listening for messages from other Earths and other moons, all across the Milky Way and far beyond.
