Washington Wanted a More Compassionate Drug Policy. Overdose Deaths Nearly Tripled.
For years, Washingtonians have been asked to trust that growing public investments, new programs, and a less punitive approach to addiction would eventually reduce the suffering visible in communities across the state.
Many people wanted that approach to succeed. They still do.
But as the problem worsens here (homelessness increased by 9% in the last year) while cities like San Diego, Miami, Honolulu, and San Francisco all saw 10-22% improvements, patience is wearing thin for many.
Government programs cannot be judged only by their intentions, funding levels or the number of services they provide. They must also be judged by whether fewer people are dying and whether more people are finding a path out of addiction.
That is the challenge Normandy Park Mayor Eric Zimmerman raises in a recent interview on The John Curley Show. Zimmerman, who also serves as Washington Policy Center’s Public Safety Solutions Policy Director, argues that Washington cannot reverse its overdose crisis without first understanding the policy choices that contributed to it.
“We have deconstructed the barriers to drug proliferation in this state more than any state in the country,” Zimmerman said.
The results are difficult to dismiss.
Zimmerman notes that Washington ranked 29th nationally in per-capita overdose deaths in 2014. By 2024, it ranked fourth. Federal data recorded more than 3,100 overdose deaths in Washington that year, with the state’s overdose death rate nearly three times what it had been a decade earlier.
Fentanyl is a national crisis, and no single state policy created it. Addiction is complicated, and neither law enforcement nor social services can solve the problem alone.
State and local decisions still shape the environment in which the drug trade operates.
Following the 2021 Blake decision, Washington’s drug possession law was declared unconstitutional. The Legislature’s temporary response required police and prosecutors to offer referrals to assessment and treatment for a person’s first two possession violations instead of pursuing prosecution. A permanent replacement was not approved until 2023.
During roughly the same period, Washington reduced funding historically directed toward the state’s multi-jurisdictional drug task forces. A bipartisan group of members of Congress is now seeking dedicated federal funding to rebuild those efforts and disrupt the organizations distributing fentanyl throughout Washington communities.
Local governments also expanded low-barrier housing and harm-reduction programs, often while leaving treatment voluntary.
But helping someone survive the next overdose cannot be the full measure of success.
Zimmerman argues that Washington gradually removed government from its role as an intermediary between drug traffickers and vulnerable people. Enforcement declined, consequences became less certain and public drug use became increasingly tolerated. Meanwhile, many publicly funded programs focused on making continued drug use less immediately dangerous without consistently moving people toward treatment.
“We are the paragon of how to create a system in which drug use and drug trade can function at optimal levels of efficiency and effectiveness, delivering substances that are lethal to people who are the most vulnerable and bringing government as far away from an intermediary role as they could possibly be,” Zimmerman said. “We have done that better than any state in the country.”
His language is deliberately stark. But the underlying concern deserves attention: In trying to avoid criminalizing people struggling with addiction, did Washington also make it easier for those profiting from their addiction to operate?
Change Washington recently highlighted proposals in Snohomish County that seek a better balance by increasing treatment funding, protecting children from exposure to lethal drugs and reconsidering whether taxpayers should purchase drug paraphernalia.
Those proposals are not about abandoning people who need help. They recognize that treatment, boundaries and intervention can be part of helping someone regain stability.
The same standard should apply to homelessness spending. As Change Washington noted while examining the restructuring of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, shifting responsibilities between agencies will accomplish little if Seattle and King County continue funding strategies that rarely move people from addiction into lasting recovery.
Most taxpayers do not want government to stop helping people. They want the billions already being spent to produce better outcomes.
That requires maintaining lifesaving tools while making treatment central to the response. It also requires stronger action against the people supplying lethal drugs and greater accountability for publicly funded programs.
Washington’s leaders made these policy choices because they believed a less punitive system would save lives. The dramatic rise in overdose deaths shows that the approach did not work as promised.
Understanding how Washington reached this point is not about assigning blame for its own sake. It is how we avoid repeating the same mistakes—and begin building a system designed not merely to manage addiction, but to help people escape it.