These mussels do not, repeat NOT, have a drug problem. These mussels are delicious and clean and fresh and totally straight. Not like those fucked up, drug-addled ones costing the taxpayers so much money!
These mussels do not, repeat NOT, have a drug problem. These mussels are delicious and clean and fresh and totally straight. Not like those fucked up, drug-addled ones costing the taxpayers so much money! TODD BRADLEY

"Opioid" is pretty high on the list of now-very-common words that diminish the potency of language and make everyone sound like a machine. (Other contenders: "impactful," "content," "utilize," "normalize," "incel.") Nevertheless, it appears to be the mot juste for passing on the news that people in the PNW take so much heroin, fentanyl, Vicodin, OxyContin, Oxycodone, and oxytocin (probably) that even the shellfish in the region are getting a contact high.

CBS News reports that scientists from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife "used cages to transplant clean mussels from an aquaculture source on Whidbey Island to 18 urbanized locations around Puget Sound. Several months later, they pulled those previously uncontaminated mussels back out of the urban waters and, together with the Puget Sound Institute," discovered trace amounts of Oxycodone in samples from three of the 18 locations.

"It's telling me there's a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area," a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist told KIRO.

You don't say.