The Spokesman-Review
CITY COUNCIL TO VOTE ON RESOLUTION ASKING INSLEE TO DECLARE STATEWIDE EMERGENCY
The Spokane City Council is scheduled to vote Monday on a resolution asking Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a state of emergency in the wake of a drug overdose crisis blamed largely on fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sponsored by Councilman Paul Dillon, the resolution calls on county leadership to model overdose data reporting done in densely populated counties in the state, such as King and Snohomish.
The models used in those counties would be “instrumental in providing real-time data to Spokane County government entities throughout the region, as well as nonprofit organizations and community groups working with affected people,” the resolution says.
Online overdose dashboards for King and Snohomish counties both list county numbers of fatal overdoses that involved fentanyl in the years 2023 as well as to date in 2024.
On Spokane County’s online overdose dashboard, there is not currently any data listed for the number of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl in 2023 or 2024.
Lutz speaks about Spokane opioid crisis, resigns days later
Presentation to City Council showed staggering data on drug fatalities
One week after he spoke to Spokane City Council and presented data about the county’s opioid epidemic, former Spokane County Health Officer Dr. Bob Lutz stepped down from his job at the state Department of Health.
Lutz spent more than three years working for the state health agency. The exact reasons for his resignation remained unclear Tuesday afternoon, and the doctor did not respond to a Spokesman-Review reporter’s requests for comments this week.
In his presentation to the council, Lutz showed staggering data about Spokane’s opioid fatalities and hospitalizations and called on his former employer, the Spokane Regional Health District, to make its overdose data more up-to-date and accessible to the public in line with some other densely populated counties in the state, such as King and Snohomish.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Health this week confirmed Lutz resigned from his job at the state agency on March 11.
“We wish Dr. Lutz the best and would like to thank him for his service to public health,” the state health department wrote in a statement sent to The Spokesman-Review on Monday.
Public records requests submitted by The Spokesman-Review to the state agency this week requesting Lutz’s resignation letter, any complaints filed about Lutz and internal communications about the doctor were met with a response that the agency anticipates providing the requested records “on or before Sept. 17, 2024.”
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown told The Spokesman she was surprised to hear of Lutz’s resignation.
“I’m disappointed,” Brown said. “I value his role with the Department of Health and in our community.”
On March 4, Lutz showed a 42-slide PowerPoint presentation to the City Council’s Public Safety & Community Health Committee about drug overdoses in Spokane County. In it, Lutz outlined data showing Spokane County’s synthetic opioid deaths surpassed Washington’s statewide average in the years 2021 and 2022.
Spokane County saw a 2,000% increase in synthetic opioid deaths between 2019 and 2022, Lutz told the city council.
“I will certainly expect to see an even greater (increase) when we see the 2023 data,” Lutz said at the meeting.