had 20 cases positive for cocaine, and has already seen more such cases than last year.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.
Four new variants of non-prescription (designer) benzodiazepines were found in the quarter. Meanwhile, the state had a notable jump in cases positive for ketamine, with 19 in the quarter (more than in all of 2023). In addition, there were 2 cases statewide positive for methylenedioxyamphetamine or MDA, a somewhat lesser-seen cousin to MDMA.
An anesthetic, ketamine has been common in the news the last several years for both therapeutic and recreational uses. Four counties saw notable increases in Q3 2026. The standout, of course, is Grant County, home to the Gorge Ampitheater.
Similar to the increase in ketamine cases above, Grant County also led the way in cases positive for phenethylamines, including the 2 cases of MDA found in Washington and 15 positive for MDMA, and for tryptamines, including 8 cases positive for psilocybin (mushrooms) and 8 with LSD.
Cocaine continues to make something of a comeback. 2025 saw 689 cases positive for cocaine statewide, the most since 2011, and 2026 is on track to be similar. In the third quarter of 2026, Grant County had 20 cases positive for cocaine, and has already seen more such cases than last year.
Due to experience with medetomidine on the East Coast, harm reduction and addiction medicine professionals in Washington have been preparing for the arrival of this strong sedative in the illicit fentanyl supply here. The King County Medical Examiner has reported a death involving medetomidine (with ketamine but no fentanyl) in 2024, but it was not seen in other data until being found in community drug checking samples in May of 2025. Medetomidine appeared in state crime lab data in Q3 2025. In Q3, medetomidine continued its spread around the state, with cases in Asotin
, Chelan
, Clallam
, Clark
, and Snohomish
Counties.
Washington saw 5 cases positive for hydrocodone in Q2 2026, in five counties. In newer drug market news, the state saw more medetomidine cases in Q2 than in all of 2025.
As noted above, the appearance of this veterinary tranquilizer in the Washington drug supply is new, and the appearance of any case in a county will likely represent a jump over the average quarter in the prior three years. The state saw a jump to 26 cases in Q2 2026, spread across 12 counties.
Skagit County
saw a jump to 10 cases positive for any opioid, including one of the aforementioned hydrocode cases. San Juan County
also saw a jump to 2 opioid cases, including 1 with one or more fentanyl analogues. Kittitas County
also saw an increase in fentanyl analogue cases, to 3, including 2 positive for carfentanil, of which there were also 2 cases in Clark County. Kittitas and Skagit Counties also each saw 2 cases positive for heroin. Ferry County
saw 2 cases positive for fentanyl in the quarter, equalling the county's historical total prior to 2026. Snohomish County had 3 cases positive for oxycodone.
The number of cases positive for stimulants continues to increase post-Blake.
Although smaller in volume than methamphetamine, jumps in cocaine cases regularly appear in these pages, often in counties one might not associate with cocaine.
While legal in Washington, there remain crime lab cases positive for cannabis (249 statewide in 2025), which may be a mix of illegal grow operations and individuals arrested for other crimes, drug or otherwise.
Clark (4 cases) and Kitsap County
(2) saw notable increases in cases positive for ketamine. Clark (4 cases) and Kitsap (2) also saw jumps in cases with phenethylamines (mostly MDMA), as did Chelan, Pierce
, and Snohomish Counties (2 each).
In the three years before the Blake decision, and after, two drug classes stood out for how often they have had increases: fentanyl and fentanyl analogues (or fentalogs). 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 others. Due to recent concern, we have added counts of cases positive for carfentanil, which are included in the fentanyl analogues count, as well as two recent additives in the fentanyl supply, the strong sedatives xylazine and medetomidine. (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 Washington 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 July 1 2023, SB 5536 replaced 5476, now making possession a (more serious) gross misdemeanor but with diversion opportunities. The resulting increase in cases has resulted in differential backlogs at state crime labs. Click on "Total cases" in the legend to see the statewide effect on crime lab cases positive for any drug.
Another drug category of recent concern is the non-prescription or designer benzodiazepines. 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 comprised more than half of all benzodiazepine-positive crime lab cases in Washington.
How does the increase in fentanyls shown above fit into the larger picture of major drugs in crime lab data in recent quarters? We present quarterly counts of cases positive for the major drug categories presented on our statewide yearly trends in major drugs in crime lab evidence page. The fentanyl and fentalog numbers shown above are in the "Other opioids" series below, which since the advent of fentanyls in Washington is now almost entirely fentanyls. Benzodiazepines are included in the Depressants series. (Recall that decreases in the most recent quarters may be due to the incompleteness of the testing results, and may change after updating.)
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. Lab backlogs further result in positive case counts months after actual seizure.
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: