Detox admittances for heroin now outnumber those for alcohol in King County and opiate overdose deaths in the region are at an all time high. Those were just a couple of the troubling facts cited by officials this week during the announcement of a new task force forming to confront Seattle and King County’s growing heroin epidemic.

In a now familiar strategy from his political playbook, Mayor Ed Murray was joined by King County Executive Dow Constantine on Tuesday to announce a 30-member task force charged with finding short and longterm strategies to slow the rise of opioid-related deaths.

“Treatment with medications like methadone or buprenorphine cuts the chances of dying in half,” said Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, an drug addiction researcher at the University of Washington and task force member. The Task Force on Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction convenes this month and has set out the following goals:

• Expand treatment capacity
• Increase access to evidence-based treatment options
• Expand prevention efforts
• Increase public awareness and understanding of addiction
• Explore other options and opportunities to improve access to treatment on demand and reduce overdose and death.

In a sad indicator of just how widespread the epidemic has become, the 30-member task force includes two representatives from Seattle Public Schools.

There were 156 heroin-related deaths in King County in 2014 as the region saw a 58% spike that same year. It’s difficult to pin down just how many happen on Capitol Hill, but experts say the neighborhood is an overdose hotspot. The recent arrival of downtown homeless outreach workers to Capitol Hill was prompted in part by the rise of drug users living on the street.

Another program aimed at diverting drug users from jail and into treatment programs is also making its way to Capitol Hill. Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion works by placing drug use suspects into counseling before they’re booked into jail.

Harm reduction advocates have long called for increased access to opioid overdose antidotes like naloxone. Last year, 43rd District Rep. Brady Walkinshaw sponsored a bill that did just that by allowing pharmacists to prescribe naloxone to first responders, homeless shelters, and family members and permit them to administer it across the state. Walkinshaw also worked on a bill this session to expand the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program, which attempts to stop prescription drug misuse by collecting all of a patients drug records.