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DIEGO CERVO/SHUTTERSTOCK

According to the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute's annual report for 2015, heroin has been the culprit behind most drug-related overdoses in King County for the past two years. One hundred thirty two people died from heroin overdoses in 2015, down from 156 deaths in 2014.

While that's an improvement, that doesn't mean fewer people are using the drug. In fact, the county's heroin epidemic has become so prevalent that UW researchers found that more people have sought treatment for heroin than for alcohol. The majority of those entering treatment for the first time were ages 18 to 29 and reported that heroin was their primary drug.

"Heroin is by far the most commonly mentioned drug among callers to the Helpline, totaling 2,100 in 2015 almost double the number in 2012," the report stated.

Here's more from report:

In 2015, syringe exchanges in King County combined to distribute 6,998,794 syringes up from 5,940,908 in 2014. The People’s Harm Reduction Alliance reports distributing 3,023 take-home-naloxone (opioid overdose antidote) kits with 1,981 self-reported reversals while Public Health- Seattle & King county distributed 346 kits and had 73 self-reported reversals.

“Drug deaths and substance-use disorders continue to have a serious impact across King County. ... At the same time, important interventions including substance-use disorder treatment, clean-syringe distribution, and use of the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone, are all increasing," Caleb Banta-Green, senior research scientist and the report’s lead author, told KOMO.

Back in April, Banta-Green told Sydney that he was supportive of safe consumption sites "in the context of good, comprehensive, community-based drug-user services." But a larger part of helping drug users in our communities is de-stigmatizing conversations about drug-use.

I hope that we can [accept having safe consumption sites] not out of shame but out of respect for drug users. I hope it can start a conversation about drug use—and that a person is not an addict but a person can be addicted. ...

The vast majority of out of control users don't want to be out of control, and they don't want to be using. It's not because they're stupid, it's not because they're bad—it's because their brain chemistry has changed. What looks irrational is completely rational biologically.

Particularly for opiates, we have really, really good treatment options that keep people alive. It's important for people to understand that. You want a drug treatment clinic in your community, because otherwise you just have drug users in your community. Eighty-seven percent of injectors want a [supervised injection facility], but they want it to be pretty close. They're not going to travel a long time for their drugs. [SIFs] are not going to become a draw. There's a reason we have 400 Starbucks in Seattle, and it's the same thing for a SIF.