 Dave's brother, Alan, with his beloved pets
Dave Somers, Snohomish County Executive
Special to the Seattle Times
When I was growing up, the issues of drug addiction and alcoholism were hidden, covering families with dark secrets in quiet shame. People were spirited away for treatment, if it was available, or sent to jail, if they couldn’t afford treatment and broke the law. But either way, they were hidden from view, and people rarely spoke about the problem.
In my family, it was my mother who suffered from substance use disorder, the contemporary term for addiction. Her drug was alcohol. When she was sober, she could be loving, kind, and considerate. However, the older she got, the less time she spent sober. In junior high school, I started to notice the effects of drinking on her personality. This funny, opinionated woman would retreat into herself and then become abusive, the latter more than the former. As a child, you see a parent in the throes of addiction and understand they are no longer there to help you; you feel this burden to try and help them. In fact, this person who should be full of love and compassion is the source of severe pain and suffering.
I was fortunate, in hindsight, since I was almost a teenager when her addiction started getting bad, and I left for college before her addiction got the best of her. My kid brother, Alan, being 12 years younger, was not so fortunate. Alan was a sensitive, brilliant, and loving child, making friends with any animal who ran across his path. He absorbed the worst of my mother, and that trauma would impact his entire life. The trauma of those years spent with my mother would nest inside his head and heart, gripping him with profound loss and his own substance use disorder.
I found out a few weeks ago that my brother, Alan, had died. The shock of his death was eclipsed only by the fact that he had died from a fentanyl overdose, even though he had been in recovery for over a decade. When he was using, his drug of choice had been heroin, and he had even been homeless for a few years. His path toward health had taken years, but it had seemed to work. He had moved from California to the Puget Sound area in the 1980s, had accepted help, gotten in a methadone program and had found a sort of peace. He had even decided to stop taking methadone, exhibiting a strength of purpose that was still intact even after all of the trauma.
I’ll probably never know why Alan overdosed again, but whether he had been consistently using or just made a fatal onetime mistake, the outcome was the same. I do know that childhood trauma haunts a person for life, and now he’s gone. As an older brother who is mourning, I want to offer my voice to the millions who live with the damage caused by substance use disorder to say: This is a disease that thrives in isolation. We can’t hide this. And we must do better.
Current policy debates on public safety, addiction and homelessness often seem to forget that real people are involved. All too often we see advocates on all sides pushing caricatures of human beings, but our very own family members and neighbors are suffering, and they need help that will work.
Historically, the approach to addressing substance use disorder has been a pair of handcuffs and a trip to jail. This was and remains a costly and ineffective approach to reducing crime and helping people achieve long-term recovery. But there are times when jail can be a powerful external motivator for someone considering recovery, and a potential path to get someone the help they need.
Thus, I support making drug possession and public use of drugs a crime and a justice system that can and does direct people into the services and treatment they need. Criminalization brings its own challenges and potential pitfalls, including inequitable application of the law and bringing people into a system that is very hard for some to escape.
The central challenge is that we have too few treatment options, a workforce shortage and not enough housing across the board. Neither cities nor counties have the resources to resolve these issues on their own. However, the state Legislature did pass a sensible drug possession law and will spend significant resources to make a difference in thousands of people’s lives.
Those who would decriminalize the possession of fentanyl are flying in the face of common sense and hard-earned experience. Law enforcement is a useful and necessary tool to keep our streets safe. Drug dealers and those who are flooding our streets with deadly drugs deserve no compassion; they are killing people. But those who are addicted deserve help.
In Snohomish County, we have built the infrastructure for addressing substance use disorder and homelessness, but we lack the resources to meet the scale of the need. We need hundreds of additional treatment beds, adequate workforce, and supportive services if we want to help all those who need it. We need an influx of state and federal dollars to address the complex issues individuals and communities are facing because of this drug crisis.
I’m not sure how better to humanize those who are suffering than to say that I loved my kid brother, and he deserved a much better and longer life. We can’t undo the trauma from someone’s past, but we can make it easier for people to get help. Alan had two beloved dogs who had died before him, and he loved the dogs we have adopted, and they loved Alan back. His dog buddies are buried on my property in rural Snohomish County, where Alan would visit during family gatherings. My sister and I plan to have Alan’s remains scattered there as well so that he can rest in peace among his buddies.
A lifetime of struggle and pain is over for Alan, but those of us left on this side of life bear the scars. We must do more before we lose more loved ones.
Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers announced that he is
advancing a holistic plan to address the impact the drug crisis is having on Snohomish County residents and businesses.
First, he is issuing an Executive Directive, effective immediately, that coordinates a robust and collaborative response to the crisis. He is also transmitting a spending plan to the Snohomish County Council for the initial $1.4 million in opioid settlement funds Snohomish County received with a focus on a community-centered response.
“I lost my only brother in March to a fentanyl overdose. I know how powerful these drugs are and the impacts they have on loved ones and our whole community. Current policy debates on public safety, addiction, and homelessness all too
often seem to forget that real people are involved,” said Executive Somers. “In Snohomish County, we have built the infrastructure for addressing substance use disorder, and this plan is crucial for advancing our efforts locally. Ultimately, we need an influx of state and federal dollars to address the complex issues individuals, communities, and businesses are facing because of this drug crisis. We must do more before we lose more loved ones.”
At 284 total fatal overdoses – opioids as well as other drugs – Snohomish County lost more than five people per week on average in 2022. Between 2017 and 2022, the number of opioid-related overdose deaths reported in Snohomish County more than doubled. The number of those that involved fentanyl jumped from 24 to 189, which represents a nearly eight-fold increase. The county has already exceeded 80 fatal overdoses within the first quarter of 2023, with more than half of them tied to opioids.
A positive change in recent years is the increased availability and use of naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdose. In 2022, local emergency departments reported 77 percent of overdose patients had received naloxone treatment prior to arriving at the hospital, up from 64 percent in 2020.
To address this crisis and build on existing work, Executive Somers is issuing an updated Executive Directive to the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) to coordinate the County’s response to this crisis. DEM will facilitate the Multi-Agency Coordination (MAC) Group and organize across agencies including Fire/EMS, housing and human services, public health and medical services, and public safety, among other key regional partners. The Executive Directive also establishes a new Disaster Policy Group, led by Executive Somers, that will incorporate the heads of impacted agencies and will provide strategic policy guidance and approvals. Notably, the Executive Directive establishes an aggressive timeline for developing and implementing strategies to address the drug use crisis:
1. Within 30 days of the receipt of the Directive, the MAC Group must submit an updated list of goals to the Disaster Policy Group for consideration and approval;
2. Within 90 days of the approval of new goals, the MAC Group must develop and submit to the Disaster Policy Group immediate strategies to reduce the number of drug-related deaths and mitigate impacts to property and public safety; and
3. Within 180 days of the approval of new goals, the MAC Group must develop and submit to the Disaster Policy Group mid- to long-term strategies to reduce the number of individuals suffering from substance use disorder.
Additionally, Executive Somers released a proposed spending plan for the first $1.4 million in opioid settlement dollars Snohomish County received. In this initial installment, the County is set to receive approximately $14 million (or $740,000 per year for the next 15 years) from the settlement with pharmaceutical companies. The County also anticipates there will be additional future settlements related to the opioid crisis. The Executive’s initial spending plan is broken into two phases,
1. Phase One includes a total of $671,125 and focuses on immediate-term actions and building infrastructure for future planning. Expenditures in this phase include expanding the County’s First Responder Leave-Behind Program by making naloxone more readily available to fire/EMS, funding to support community-based organizations that wish to expand their grassroots opioid-related efforts, and increasing education efforts.
2. Phase Two includes a total of $800,000 and focuses on longer-term proposals. Expenditures in this phase will likely include school-based education to mitigate substance use disorder among youth and the creation of a mobile resource to provide medication assisted treatment and/or counseling for individuals suffering from substance use disorder throughout the county.
The Snohomish County Council will review and vote on the Executive’s proposed spending plan in the coming weeks. If approved by the Council, the County will begin distributing this urgent funding into the community. The goals and crisis response strategies identified by the MAC Group and approved by the Disaster Policy Group will be publicly available at https://snohomishoverdoseprevention.com/.
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