Dark picture painted for Washington, country’s opioid epidemic

For all the publicity the opioid epidemic has received, for all the warnings about how we have to do something, it seems to be getting worse.

STAT News gathered forecasts from 10 public health experts on where the crisis is going. STAT News’ Max Blau says if we don’t do something drastic, the number of people who will die from addiction will be nearly 500,000 in the next decade.

“Some things have worked,” he said. “As one public health expert told me, it’s a matter of are we doing enough?”

Half-a-million deaths in the next decade might seem like a lot, but when you consider a conservative estimate of the number of people who inject illegal drugs in Washington state alone is around 25,000, it isn’t too hard to imagine.

As KIRO Radio’s Mike Lewis reported earlier this year, Seattle and King County set a new record for fatal overdoses in 2016 with 359 deaths. Of those, 61 percent involved opioids.

There have been positive efforts in the fight against addiction, such as getting Narcan — an overdose-reversing drug — into the hands of first responders and others. Treatment has been expanded as well, but, as Blau points out, there is a “long way to go.”

And that journey to ending addiction could become even longer if a Republican appeal of the Affordable Care Act is ever approved. That’s because in some states, as Blau reports, half of those receiving addiction treatment through Medicaid got that treatment thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

Blau says one in 10 of the more than 2 million with opioid addiction receive treatment.

“If, as a nation, only one in 10 cancer patients got treatment, there would be outrage,” he said.

Listen to the entire interview here.