(The Center Square) – After a record-high in 2024, Spokane County Medical Examiner Dr. Veena Singh told The Center Square she expects the total number of overdose deaths to fall in 2025, but not by much.
The homelessness and opioid crisis have fueled the rise in recent years, but Singh said fentanyl, drugs sold as fentanyl mixed with others and polysubstance use are the biggest drivers for overdose deaths. She recorded 353 deaths in 2024, just over 17% more than the 301 overdose deaths she tallied in 2023.
Singh told The Center Square on Monday that her office has recorded 332 cases where drugs caused or contributed to death so far in 2025, but they still have 33 more awaiting testing. More than half are historically recorded as overdoses, but she said it will take a few more months to get back the results.
“I do anticipate that the number of overdose deaths will be somewhat lower than 2024 — it will still be a very high number,” Singh emailed in response to a follow-up on Wednesday, “but at least we will not be seeing the continuous increases that we’ve seen in recent years, which is very encouraging.”
Overdose deaths skyrocketed more than 300% from 88 people in 2019 to 2024’s record-high of 353.
If none of the 33 pending cases are ruled as overdoses, the figure in 2025 so far represents a nearly 6% decrease. Assuming at least half of those cases are overdose deaths, as Singh said, that decrease narrows to 1.2%. She said sometimes up to two-thirds of pending cases are ruled as overdose deaths.
If that were true in this case, two-thirds of the pending deaths would bring the total to 354, breaking another record for overdose deaths in Spokane County for 2025. The Spokane City Council replaced a public camping ban in October that some thought would lead to measurable reductions in overdoses.
Singh said all 33 pending cases for 2025 occurred from October to December, so she doesn’t yet have data to assess the impact of the new camping ban. She intends to watch where the location of deaths change, indoors or outdoors, and that of residential, shelter and transitional housing death numbers.
According to her data, 48% of the 2025 deaths so far occurred in the decedent’s private residence; 12% in another private residence; 5% in a hotel/motel; 2% in shelters, transitional and emergency housing; 2% in supervised residential settings like a treatment facility, while 1% occurred in a public restroom, 7% in a motor vehicle and 18% in public spaces like a sidewalk, park, alleyway or others.
Those figures only add up to 95%, but she said there’s still work to be done.
“I am still cleaning up this data, and of course, there are still some pending cases,” Singh said.
