Prescription Painkiller Deaths are Down, But Heroin Deaths are Way Up in Washington: “Deaths from prescription painkiller overdoses are down in Washington, but new statewide numbers show that progress is being offset by another alarming statistic,” KPLU reports. “Between 2008 and 2014, the number of people who died from prescription narcotic overdoses dropped from over 512 to 319. But over the same period, the number of deaths from heroin overdose nearly doubled, to 293. Those numbers reflect the shifting nature of narcotic addiction in Washington and elsewhere. Prescription opioid deaths peaked in the 2000s. Then doctors began to revise their prescription guidelines to make those medicines harder to get. State Health Officer Kathy Lofy with the Washington Department of Health says that probably pushed some addicts from one drug to another.”
State of Emergency Because of Wind Storm: “Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in all counties to help the state recover from a series of storms that killed three people Tuesday, cut off power to more than 300,000 and caused major destruction across Washington,” the Seattle Times reports.
School Board Votes for Later School Start Times: The vote was 6-1, and as Ann Dornfeld reports: “Research shows that teenagers’ brains are biologically unprepared to learn until mid-morning. The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that middle and high school start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. But most Seattle middle and high schools start 40 minutes earlier than that, at 7:50.” Now things are changing, effective next school year.
The End of Convention Place Station: “Because a city’s convention center is in constant competition with the convention centers in other cities, it can’t stop growing,” writes Charles Mudede. “It doesn’t matter if the building is as ugly as the pylon beneath an off-ramp; it just has to very big, most important of all, bigger than the rest. This is the hard law of the event business… [So] a deal has just been struck between the space-hungry Washington Convention Center and King County Metro’s Convention Place Station. What the former wants is to transform the bus station into more of itself—a convention center. But when this happens, what will become of all the buses that use the station and the tunnel?”
“A Portrait in Bravery” In case you missed it, here’s Danny Westneat’s Tuesday column on Hussein Ali, a Syrian refugee who works at Crane Aerospace in Lynnwood, and what Ali makes of the current climate of anti-immigrant demagoguery and scapegoating.
Speaking of Which: “The Olympia chapter of the organization ACT for America is seeking a permit to rally at noon on Friday against Syrian refugees coming to the state,” reports Joseph O’Sullivan. The rally would take place “at the Capitol.”
The Seattle Art Museum’s “Exploding” Cars Are Coming Down: “My fellow art-loving Seattleites, our long civic nightmare is over,” writes Jen Graves.
There’s a National Debate Over “Predictive Policing,” a Tactic That’s Being Tried Out In Seattle: “More police departments are trying to predict crime through computer analysis of data, part of the growing trend of using algorithms to analyze human behavior,” the New York Times writes, introducing an online debate over the issue. “Advocates say this approach focuses on those most likely to commit crimes, allowing for better relationships between police and residents. But critics say the computer models perpetuate racial profiling and infringe on civil liberties with little accountability, especially when the forecasting models are built by companies that keep their methods secret.” The Stranger recently wrote about a local debate over this same issue.
Local Law Students Are Upset With the King County Bar Association for Backing New Juvie: “A group of local law students is upset with the King County Bar Association (KCBA) for supporting the construction of a new King County juvenile jail,” writes Ansel Herz, “and one of those students recently resigned in protest from his student liaison position with the KCBA over the issue.”
Bernie Sanders Is Giving a Big Speech Today to Explain What Socialism Means to Him: “Think socialism and you may think of the government taking over the steel mills and the oil refineries—the means of production,” reports Tamara Keith. “That’s not what Sanders has in mind. But he does envision a greatly expanded role for government. Sanders is calling for things like Medicare for all and free public college paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy. He’d do some redistribution of wealth. But he’s thinking modern day Denmark—not 1950s USSR.” The speech will be delivered at 11 am PST at Georgetown University.
More Details Emerging on Police Raid in Paris on Wednesday: “Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian militant suspected of orchestrating the Paris terrorist attacks, died in a police raid in the northern Paris suburb of St.-Denis early Wednesday,” the New York Times reports, citing French authorities. “The confirmation of Mr. Abaaoud’s death followed fingerprint analysis, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in a statement.”
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