Media coverage celebrates Seattle's new ORCA Center as offering "treatment" for opioid addiction. We use the word treatment intentionally -- meaning "management and care to prevent, cure, or slow progression of a medical condition." ORCA offers none of this. This $12 million facility represents expensive management disguised as treatment, with no pathway to cure, recovery, or life transformation.
Our Ground-Level Perspective
From street addiction to founding O-UT (Overhaul-Unrelenting Transfiguration), Ginny's program demonstrates stable recovery through accountability measures. Andrea's boots-on-the-ground work with We Heart Seattle's intervention program shows what moves people from addiction to stability through recovery-first outreach and housing. Together, we've witnessed both addiction's depths and recovery's heights. ORCA's designers ignore both realities.
Academic Arrogance, Deadly Results
Dr. Caleb Banta-Green and Dr. Callan Fockele, ORCA's architects, have presided over more than 5,300 overdose deaths in King County since 2018, including a record-breaking 1,338 deaths in 2023 alone. When confronted about this devastating track record, Dr. Fockele's response was a dismissive shrug -- the same reaction she gave when offered partnership with Seattle's recovery community.
These "subject matter experts" have never experienced addiction, withdrawal, or the fight for recovery, yet prescribe ineffective treatments for conditions they've never faced. They're not consulting with people who have overcome addiction and achieved independence. This isn't leadership -- it's institutional momentum masquerading as expertise.
The 23-Hour Illusion
ORCA offers "stabilization" for up to 23 hours, marketing this through a fictional character named "Jimmy" rather than real success stories. Why sell a hypothetical when this approach has operated in Seattle for years?
People emerging from overdose face withdrawal symptoms, cravings, sleep deprivation, potential hypoxic brain injury, polysubstance complications, and psychological trauma. These factors significantly impair judgment and decision-making for days beyond ORCA's arbitrary 23-hour window.
Market Subsidization Disguised as Harm Reduction
ORCA staff prepare to hand out glass pipes for methamphetamine and aluminum foil for smoking fentanyl, while street users pick it up free of charge to redistribute for $5 to dealers. Through Andrea's intervention work she says, "We see this reality constantly. We're not reducing harm -- we're subsidizing the market we claim to combat." Even ORCA's own lived experience advisory members expressed doubts about pipe distribution during the public tour.
The Mathematics of Managed Decline
ORCA's eight beds will theoretically serve "hundreds annually," though the pilot program achieved a mere 1% engagement rate: 100 people received Suboxone over two years despite close to 10,000 professional overdose reversals. The cost breakdown reveals fiscal irresponsibility:
Maximum 2,920 people could use beds annually (one person per bed, per day)1% of those = 29 people who would actually engage in treatment$12 million ÷ 29 = $413,793 per person who engages
This very expensive service comes with no measurable outcomes tied to recovery or self-sufficiency. Meanwhile, both Ginny's O-UT program and Andrea's We Heart Seattle recovery-first initiatives accomplish long term transformational outcomes that ORCA will not deliver with this model.
The ORCA MAT Model = Perpetual Dependence
ORCA continues to follow a failed model. Medication-Assisted Treatment perpetuates long-term drug dependency rather than providing actual treatment. MAT creates another level of chemical dependency that patients remain trapped in for years, sometimes decades, without addressing the underlying issues driving addiction.
Strategic Intent: Client Base Maintenance
ORCA sits between The Morrison and Star Center, creating an intentional ecosystem of managed addiction. This placement reveals ORCA's true purpose: maintaining a stable client base rather than producing recovery outcomes. When it inevitably fails, architects will declare we need clean and safe injection sites with tax payer supplied drugs.
Silenced Recovery Voices
Despite thousands in Seattle's recovery community ready to contribute expertise, ORCA architects made no meaningful outreach. The recovery community has decades of success in overcoming, yet ORCA appears to have no partnerships with abstinence-based treatment programs, focusing exclusively on harm reduction instead.
Real Solutions Require Real Treatment
Three reforms could redirect toward actual effectiveness:
Mandatory abstinence based recovery community involvement in program designLegal intervention pathways for repeat visitsPartnerships with abstinence-based programs leading to self-sufficiency
The Tragedy of Managed Decline
Through five years of front-row seats to Seattle's crisis, Ginny and Andrea's work reveals a stark truth: Intentional services focused on stability and recovery are possible, yet programs like ORCA are designed to further remove addicts from the stream of life, leaving them stuck in the throes of desperate circumstances. The focus is on management instead of prevention.
Why do we continue to financially support models that lead nowhere? The tragedy isn't wasted millions -- it's abandoning people to "professionally managed" decline when transformation is within reach. Seattle deserves programs that address root causes, not expensive systems designed to maintain a stable client base while human lives deteriorate.
People struggling with addiction deserve opportunities for change, growth, and self-sufficiency. We've lived this crisis from every angle. It's time Seattle listened to those who've walked these paths and found real solutions, not expensive management systems masquerading as treatment.
Ginny Burton is a former street addict, University of Washington graduate, founder of O-UT (Overhaul-Unrelenting Transfiguration), and facilitates transformational change programs. Andrea Suarez runs We Heart Seattle boots-on-the-ground drug user intervention program focused on recovery-first outreach and housing.