New and emerging drugs in state crime lab evidence: Quarters 3 & 4, 2019
Data source, utility, and limitations
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. While 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 that are described at the bottom of this page.
On this page, 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 most recent quarter. (Data are preliminary and will change. For more on the data, see the details at the end of the page).
Emerging drugs in the third quarter of 2019
Statewide, there were significant jumps (more than double the number of cases testing positive than in the average quarter in the prior 3 calendar years) in non-prescription "designer" benzodiazepines and in both fentanyl itself and fentanyl analogues. We start with these, and then turn to other drug classes showing increases in specific counties.
Non-prescription benzodiazepines: As in the prior quarter, there was a statewide jump (to 8) in cases testing positive for one or more benzodiazepine that is not legally available in the US. Snohomish County had 2 such cases in the quarter after seeing 1 prior to 2019, while Cowlitz County had 3 in the quarter and no such cases prior to 2019.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid many times more powerful than heroin or morphine. Washington state had 82 cases of fentanyl in the quarter, with 14 counties experiencing jumps.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
Fentanyl analogues include both derivatives of and precursors to fentanyl. Some are even more powerful opioids than fentanyl itself, and some are legal pharmaceuticals. The state saw 12 cases of analogues in the quarter, after 8 such cases total from 2002 through 2016. Half of those 12 cases were in Benton County.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
Four southeast Washington counties saw jumps in opioids of any type. Four of the Adams County cases, all 3 in Asotin County, and 1 of the 2 Columbia County opioid cases included heroin.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
Phenethylamines are consumed recreationally for their mood- and energy-enhancing properties. This class of drug includes methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or "Ecstasy") and methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA or "Sally"). Grant County often sees jumps in phenethylamines and other so-called "party drugs" during the summer thanks to the Gorge Amphitheater. Grant County also saw a significant jump, to 4 cases, in psilocybin mushrooms. All 18 cases represented in the map included either MDA or MDMA (or both).
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
Grant and Chelan Counties each had 10 cases of cocaine in the third quarter, above the average quarter in recent years but not perhaps higher than the average quarter in the 2000s.
Emerging drugs in the fourth quarter of 2019
As in the third quarter, the fourth quarter saw notable increases statewide in fentanyl and fentanyl analogue cases and those involving non-prescription "designer" benzodiazepines.
Opioids
Statewide, there were 71 cases of fentanyl in the fourth quarter of 2019. Each quarter in 2019 has seen significant jumps over the average quarter in 2016-2018. There have been 330 fentanyl cases in Washington so far in 2019, nearly double 2018's 170 cases. Ten counties saw significant increases in fentanyl cases, although that includes 3 counties with a single case in the quarter.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
The state saw 15 cases of fentanyl analogues in the fourth quarter, after another jump in the third.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
Prescription-type opioids are opioids available legally, but the particular specimen seized may or may not have originated from a prescription (or hospital source) and been diverted. King County had 33 cases of prescription opioids in the quarter (including the 21 fentanyl cases noted above). The county averaged just over 43 cases per year over the prior 4 years but has had 100 so far in 2019. The 33 cases in the fourth quarter included 8 cases of oxycodone and 4 of buprenorphine, most commonly used as a medication for opioid use disorder.
Once again, several counties and the state as a whole saw an increase in cases testing positive for a non-prescription benzodiazepine. The state saw 9 cases, a third of which were in King County. While not all of these drugs are new--a first-time result this quarter, adinazolam, is actually several decades old and legal in Canada--they seem to be proliferating.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
Tryptamines are a class of drug that includes many new and emerging pyschoactives but also includes psilocybin/psilocin (psychedelic mushrooms) and LSD. All of the jumps in the fourth quarter of 2019 involved one or the other of these older tryptamines.
Preliminary data. Data source: Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau, Washington State Patrol
In order to smooth the jumps, we compare the current quarter to the average quarter over the prior 3 years. This means that an unusually low number of cases in the prior year no longer creates what looks like a substantial increase, which is particularly an issue with relatively rare drug categories and/or small counties.
As we describe elsewhere, there are many limitations of the data, including: county being an imperfect geographic unit to report the data; changes in law enforcement policy, practice and resources over time; and often substantial lags between when drugs were seized by law enforcement and when they were submitted to the lab and then further lags due to testing and reporting.
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 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 do not capture the initial rise of such a novel substance, but at best its peak and decline. Here we just focus on significant counts of new or rarely-before-seen substances.
In addition to the above issues with crime lab case counts, 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.
Please refer to the other crime lab data pages for other insight:
had 2 such cases in the quarter after seeing 1 prior to 2019, while Cowlitz County
had 3 in the quarter and no such cases prior to 2019. 
and Chelan
Counties each had 10 cases of cocaine in the third quarter, above the average quarter in recent years but not perhaps higher than the average quarter in the 2000s. 