Quarterly data provided by the Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau are used to identify drugs that appear to be increasing in law enforcement seizures in the 2 most recent quarters. (Data are preliminary and will change. For more on the data, see the details at the end of the page). We show significant increases in crime lab submissions associated with a given county (or the whole state) testing positive for a given drug. We define a “significant increase” or jump as a quarterly count more than twice as large as seen in the average quarter over the prior 3 years. We focus mainly on notable increases versus overall trends.
In response to local and national attention to a new adulterant or impurity appearing in the unregulated drug supply, first identified by local community drug checking in July, the state crime lab in September added the chemical to the list of substance results. Bis(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidyl) sebacate (BTMPS) is used in making plastics, and its effects in the human body are not understood, nor is it clear why it has appeared in the drug supply, usually associated with fentanyl. Statewide, there were 22 cases positive for BTMPS in September, of which 16 were submitted with one or more fentanyls.
Island
(5 cases) and San Juan
(2 cases) Counties saw notable jumps in cases positive for fentanyl specifically. Four other counties saw increases in fentanyl analogues. The analogues include substances that are structurally and functionally similar to fentanyl, some of which may reflect incomplete synthesis of fentanyl, and some of which are more potent than fentanyl itself.
Legally available only for veterinary use, xylazine is typically seen in combination with fentanyls. Xylazine cases are undercounted because it is not a controlled substance and is inconsistently reported in crime lab data. Data from other sources, including medical examiners and opioid treatment programs, indicates that xylazine was present in a small but growing percentage of cases in which fentanyls were identified in 2023, and these trends continued into 2024. Eleven counties saw jumps in xylazine as this depressant adulterant spreads in the fentanyl supply. Each case represented here involved xylazine submitted with a fentanyl.
Cocaine continued to see increases in preliminary third quarter crime lab data, as it did in the second quarter (see below), although not all in the same counties.
Asotin
(3 cases), Island (5 cases), and Skagit
(5 cases) Counties saw jumps in the number of cases positive for methamphetamine.
Pierce County
had notable increases in cases positive for non-prescription benzodiazepines (4 cases) and cannabis (3 cases).
For the state as a whole, a notable increase in cases positive for xylazine saw 45 cases, of which 44 also had a fentanyl submitted. Individual counties saw jumps in several other drug categories.
As in the third quarter (above), xlyazine cases jumped in a number of counties in Q2 2024. Xylazine cases are undercounted because it is not a controlled substance and is inconsistently reported in crime lab data.
Xylazine is included in the broader depressants category, along with benzodiazepines, GHB, etc., and 10 of the 11 counties showing jumps in depressants had notable increases in xylazine. Rarely were all of the depressants cases positive for xylazine. In addition, Snohomish County saw an increase to 6 cases positive for non-prescription benzodiazepines and Grays Harbor County had 3 such cases.
In the second quarter, 10 counties saw notable jumps in the number of crime lab cases testing positive for fentanyl itself. Seven counties also saw increases in cases positive for one or more fentanyl analogues, although for some this was a single case.
Meth saw notable increases, with jumps in the number of cases in 13 counties. For the second quarter running, Clark and Cowlitz Counties led the way. Cowlitz has seen 161 cases positive for meth so far in 2024 versus 194 in all of 2023, while Clark saw 120 cases in 2023 and already 210 in 2024.
Led by Snohomish County, 6 counties saw jumps in the number of cases positive for cocaine. In 2014 through 2020 (the last full year before the Blake decision), Snohomish County averaged less than 20 cases per year positive for cocaine. So far in 2024 it has seen 31, after 44 in 2023.
Although legal in Washington state, crime lab cases positive for cannabis have jumped in different counties over the past three years. Lewis County has seen three consecutive quarters with jumps and has had 45 positive cases so far in 2024 after 21 in 2023 and 23 combined in 2021 and 2022.
In the three years before the Blake decision, and after, three drug classes stood out for how often they have had increases: fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and non-prescription benzodiazepines. Although, as noted, quarter is a rough representation of time, we present time trends by quarter to illustrate the changes in the presence of these substances in Washington state. Click on the Fentanyl series name in the legend to turn that series off and better see the other two. (Note that decreases in the most recent quarters may be due to the incompleteness of the testing results, and may change after updating.)
State v. Blake: On February 25, 2021 the WA State Supreme Court essentially struck down the State’s felony drug possession law. Community reports from law enforcement and jails indicated an immediate decline in arrests and incarcerations for drug possession cases. On May 13, 2021 the Governor signed SB 5476, immediately making drug possession for adults a divertible offense for the first two cases with subsequent charges a misdemeanor. Law enforcement agencies are to refer divertible cases to local recovery navigator programs. On 1 July 2023, SB 5536 replaced 5476, now making possession a (more serious) gross misdemeanor but with diverson opportunities. Click on "Total cases" in the legend to see the statewide effect on crime lab cases positive for any drug.
The rise in "street Xanax" does not appear to be associated with an overall increase in all benzodiazepines. Instead, there appears to be a substitution effect: The first case of designer benzodiazepines identified in the state was one of the 268 total benzodiazepine cases in 2017. In 2019, illicit benzodiazepines comprised one quarter of the total, in 2020 the novel benzodiazepines were present in nearly one half, and in 2024 they comprise more than half of all benzodiazepine-positive crime lab cases in Washington.
Crime lab data are a partial indicator of the supply of illegal drugs or prescription drugs that are controlled substances and suspected of being purchased or sold illegally. The data presented here are the results of the Washington State Patrol’s Crime Lab chemistry testing of samples submitted by law enforcement. Most data are from local or state law enforcement, while larger federal cases are not tested by the state lab. The data provide important insights into the supply of drugs, in part due to the use of precise chemical testing which indicates exactly which substance is present. They also have numerous important limitations.
Truly new drugs present a challenge for crime lab testing: the need for a standard to which to compare the lab sample for identification. Cannabimimetics, non-prescription benzodiazepines, and novel psychoactive drugs (e.g., variations of MDMA), for example, are constantly changing. Often when a particular formulation gains enough notoriety--usually, being made illegal or causing a widely reported death--to warrant a standards company producing a chemical standard and a crime lab buying it, the formulation is changed. Thus, time trends in identified crime lab cases likely do not capture the initial rise of such a novel substance.
There are difficulties with reliably assigning a case to a particular quarter. First, the date entered as the received date for a particular case may be a few days after when the case actually arrived at the lab, which might put it into the next quarter. This date clearly comes after the actual arrest. Furthermore, testing takes time, and so results may not come until a subsequent quarter. Sometimes the initial request is for only some of the evidence from a case to be tested, and so the other items might be tested later at prosecutor request, adding further delay between submission and result.
In sum, "quarter" does not mean when law enforcement seized the drug, and counts will likely change. All data presented here are preliminary. In order to smooth the jumps, we compare the current quarter to the average quarter over the prior 3 years (a rolling 12-quarter comparison period). The presence of jumps is muted by the Blake decision.
Please refer to the other crime lab data pages for further insight: