A Seattle bus driver is on medical leave after he claims passengers commonly smoking fentanyl on his bus have made him sick.
Stevon Williams, a driver for King County Metro, was placed on leave while awaiting test results over exposure to smoke from the lethal synthetic opioid, though health officials say the second-hand smoke “poses no real risk,” according to a local report.
“I really hadn’t ever heard of fentanyl smoking on the bus when I was hired by Metro,” Williams told local AM radio station KOMO News. “I don’t want to be put in a predicament where I’m around drugs every day on my job – I didn’t sign up for that.”
According to King County Metro data, there were 1,885 reports of drug use on the bus system in 2022. As many as 52 bus operators reported being exposed to drug smoke and 16 operators filed workers compensation claims, KOMO reported.
“You have people who are on there smoking right beside passengers, right beside mothers with little children. It’s for the drug users, they’re looked out for first,” Williams said.
“I just know when we’re sick, we should be checked and listened to,” he added.
Local health officials say that exposure to smoke from the deadly opioid is not particularly dangerous.
“When someone smokes fentanyl, most of the drug has been filtered out by the user before there is secondhand smoke,” Dr. Scott Phillips, the medical director of the Washington Poison Center wrote on the health department’s blog. “It doesn’t just sort of float around … there’s no real risk for the everyday person being exposed to secondhand opioid smoke.”
During a King County Metro meeting on drug use last year, a health department rep said that the media often misreports facts about second-hand fentanyl smoke.
“It’s important to note when you see fentanyl reporting that you take a really take a critical eye because there is a lot of misinformation out there,” said Thea Oliphant-Wells, a social worker for Seattle & King County Public Health. “We’re not seeing folks developing second hand exposure, this is just not happening. Not to say that it could never happen, but we’re not seeing it.”
Oliphant-Wells told metro workers that they actually prefer that users take drugs in public spaces in case of an overdose, although drug use is prohibited on public transit.
“We don’t want people to be using in private spaces alone, we want people to be using in a place where if they overdose they can be discovered and helped through that overdose,” she said.
In response to the rampant drug use and other safety issues, King County Metro has doubled its security staff.
“Metro is improving safety for both employees and customers. Drug use is prohibited on transit, and we are doubling our transit security staff to 140 officers with Council support,” a Metro spokesperson told KOMO in a statement.
“We’ve added a second security contractor to support our efforts countywide,” the spokesperson said. “These staff members are key to addressing reports from operators and customers and reduce incidents on buses and at transit locations.”
King County declared fentanyl a public health emergency in 2022, when over 700 people died from overdoses.
