Drug Harm Reduction Programs Could Help Weaken The Fentanyl Crisis

On the streets, fentanyl is replacing heroin as the dominant opiate among drug users, but harm reduction programs could help lessen its use.

Walk a few blocks in downtown Seattle and the fentanyl crisis is hard to miss. Scorched foil, used to smoke illicit fentanyl pills, litters the streets where drug deals and drug use happen in broad daylight.

Overdoses from the powerful synthetic opioid set a record in King County in 2021, killing at least 709 people, which is up from 511 the year before.

Will, who is homeless and says he’s an addict, holds a strip of foil with a tiny blue fentanyl pill inside. He says these "blues," as they’re called on the street, are the only opioid he can get his hands on right now.