Drafter
Clerk 11/01/2021
Title
A MOTION requesting the King County sheriff establish a fentanyl interdiction task force to develop strategies and techniques to stop the flow of fentanyl in order to reduce fentanyl-related overdoses and deaths in the Puget Sound region through the development of strategies to enhance coordination among local law enforcement agencies, including a report; and requesting the sheriff to seek grants to assist in the development and implementation of recommended strategies and techniques identified by the task force.
Body
WHEREAS, over the past two decades the United States has experienced a growing crisis in opioid-related overdose deaths, and
WHEREAS, during that time, the annual number of overdose deaths in the United States has more than quadrupled from approximately seventeen thousand five hundred in 2000 to more than eighty-one thousand in 2020, and
WHEREAS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 2020 marked the highest number of overdose deaths ever reported in one year, and
WHEREAS, while overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, the latest numbers suggest an acceleration of overdose deaths during the pandemic, and
WHEREAS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reports that illicitly manufactured fentanyl appears to be the primary driver of increases in overdose deaths, and
WHEREAS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published a report showing the economic cost of fatal opioid overdose in 2017 totaled eight billion five hundred million dollars in Washington state and more than five hundred fifty billion dollars nationwide, and
WHEREAS, fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an analgesic and anesthetic that is approximately fifty times more potent than heroin and one hundred times more potent than morphine, and
WHEREAS, the Drug Enforcement Age...
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