Seattle — Seattle’s fentanyl crisis is impossible to hide from public view, with open-air drug use, rising overdose deaths and struggling addicts highlighting the challenges facing city leaders and community advocates.
Hector, an addict, told Fox News Digital that he is having a “hard time” and that the most common drug used in the region is “fetty” and warned young people to stay away from it.
“Young people, don’t waste your life on drugs,” Hector said. “It’s a waste of time, a waste of money, a waste of life.”
We Heart Seattle, an organization Andrea Suarez founded in the fall of 2020 to clean up public spaces and provide resources to people in need, has tried to help Hector several times.
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Hector and Andrea Suarez, founders of We Heart Seattle on March 16, 2026.
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Suarez told Fox News Digital that she believes the city, which recently elected Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson in November, is not doing enough to address the crisis.
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“We’re the only outreach agency that really advocates for people to be accountable for their own safety and the safety of others,” Suarez said. “Because the culture here is very hands-on, live and let live. And drug users are people too, and we’re the problem. We’re traumatized by systemic racism and poverty and capitalism and, like, all of this ideology that’s so entrenched in Seattle that it’s a do-nothing attitude from our politicians who are dishonest and take out a lot of activists here. It’s bad for the community because they’re anti-incarceration of any kind.”
In an internal email obtained by Fox News Digital, Seattle Police Chief Sean Barnes wrote that “all charges related to drug possession and/or drug use will be diverted from prosecution to the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program,” but Wilson denied claims that his administration was changing drug enforcement policy.
Suarez said the city needs to adopt stronger policies to address the crisis.
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Andrea Suarez, Founder and Executive Director of We Heart Seattle, on March 16, 2026.
“So if you strengthen that penalty, and you can arrest a person for setting up a tent in a park and using drugs, suddenly six months or a year in jail can prevent you from using in public and accepting help,” Suarez said.
“As outreach workers, you know, why do we get burned? Because we can’t make a difference without teeth, without laws, without law enforcement,” she continued. “That’s why good laws and the use of these common spaces and less restrictive properties such as small houses and hotels and permanent supportive housing that allow drug dealers and drug addicts to use within their property, if they are a nuisance to the community, they should be fined and forced to have a good neighborhood agreement.
Local outlet KOMO News reported on April 16 that the Syringe Services Program Health Survey found that in 2021, 93% of respondents reported injecting drugs. By 2025, however, 90% said they had used drugs in the previous week, while injections had dropped to 44%.
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Needles lie on the ground near Daejeon Park in Seattle on March 16, 2026.
The Roosevelt News, another local outlet, reported last year that King County would record 1,067 drug poisoning deaths due to fentanyl in 2023, a 47% increase over the previous year.
According to the University of Washington Institute on Addiction, Drug, and Alcoholism, opioid overdose death rates in King, Pierce and Spokane counties more than quadruple Between 2002-2004 and 2024-2025.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported in November that the agency had seized nearly 3.4 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl from two drug trafficking groups targeted in an investigation in the Western District of Washington.
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A street in downtown Seattle with a homeless encampment on March 16, 2026.
“Hard people who were big-time opioid users who ran the streets for years and years, if not decades, will tell you that putting drugs on top of drugs is not the way to help a drug addict,” Suarez said. “The alternative is how you want to be helped if you want to be helped, not thousands of dollars of drugs. Often, it ends up being a subsidy for drug addicts, just to enable them and trap them in addiction, which we’ve seen firsthand.”
Suarez also emphasized that the work of some local left-wing activist groups is making it more difficult to reduce homelessness and crime, which are looking for quick cash to get their next fix. She told Fox News Digital that these groups are often against any form of incarceration, regardless of the alleged crime.
Seattle’s Northwest Community Bail Fund (NCBF), along with other similar groups, aims to reduce the downside of the cash bail system, which often pays bail for people who can’t afford it. These groups, highlighted in a CBS News story, claim that cash bail disproportionately affects low-income people.
Victims of violent crime have previously complained that these groups have given relief to people who pose a threat to the public.
Like Hector, Erica is another addict that Suarez and We Heart Seattle are trying to help.
“So this is a common barrier to accepting services and treatment, Erica not wanting to be separated from her dog under any circumstances,” Suarez said. “So, we offered to provide kenneling for her … we’d pay people to kennel their dogs while they went to treat them. And she was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ So he’s got two fingers cut off, living on the sidewalk, snow-bitten nose.
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A homeless man, 24, smokes fentanyl in Seattle on March 12, 2022.
Dr. Suarez of Seattle. Jose Rizal said the demolition of the pavilion and picnic area at the park is symbolic of the current drug crisis.
“This pavilion is very, very bittersweet to talk about, because this pavilion was torn down recently because it was untenable for drug use, fire damage. People were just packed in here,” Suarez said. “It looked like a tombstone. So the neighbors advocated for it to be torn down because the roof burned. And that’s why it remains.”
Only the pavilion and burnt cement remain.
A homeless man holds a piece of aluminum foil used to smoke fentanyl on March 13, 2022 in Seattle, Washington.
“It’s really very symbolic of this kind of scene in Seattle, our parks, children’s playgrounds, the use of drugs and fentanyl and their civil liberties are really taking priority and priority, really taking precedence over civil liberties,” Suarez added. “And so it was very difficult to see it destroyed, not even a few months ago.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Wilson and King County Public Health for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
Original article source: Inside Seattle’s open-air drug crisis, fentanyl ravages the city and activists bail out alleged criminals.
