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Fentanyl deaths in King County have been rising dramatically, now averaging about two per day. A disproportionate number are Indigenous and Black residents.
King county has been sounding an alarm about growth in overdose deaths.
In 2021 the State Supreme Court issued its “Blake” decision, overturning drug possession laws in our state due to technical issues regarding the definition of possession. Our state legislature responded by implementing an ineffective interim drug possession law that requires police to issue two referrals to treatment to anyone caught with hard drugs like fentanyl or heroin before they can be arrested. But no clear state-wide mechanism has been established for recording and tracking the referrals, so police can’t track the number of referrals or arrest for possession. Instead, police can just suggest people using drugs go to treatment, the same way everyone else has been unsuccessfully suggesting this to people struggling with addiction.
Even worse, the Blake decision and ineffective possession law have made Washington State an excellent market for selling fentanyl, and many drug dealers have swept in to cash in on the bonanza. Since fentanyl is already cut into easy-to-count pills, no dealer paraphernalia is required to start pedaling it on the street. Dealers with 100 pills (worth $1000) can go out on the sidewalk where people experiencing homelessness are camped, and ask five people to each hold 20 pills for them during the day in exchange for getting one for free. Then as the dealer make sales, they tell the buyer which “holder” to get the pills from. Since no one is holding more than 20 pills, and no one has “drug dealer paraphernalia” everyone claims personal use if questioned by police. The most that can happen to anyone is that they will be referred to treatment.
The only real hope lately to try to stop the flow of fentanyl into our cities has been for police to make major busts of people transporting it into the state, and that has become almost impossible because police can’t pursue them anymore.
The effect of these drugs is evident everywhere we look. Drug use is methodically killing an exponentially-growing number of people in our state, devastating families and often leaving children without proper care. Meanwhile crime skyrockets to pay for these drugs.
There are bills in the House and Senate that will make sensible improvements to these laws, and the legislature should adopt one of them.
Senate Bill 5536 was voted out of committee yesterday, which sets it up for a potential senate floor debate. The bill would make most drug possession in Washington a gross misdemeanor (instead of a felony as it was before the Blake decision), while also encouraging substance-abuse treatment as a way for those arrested to avoid a drug conviction.
While this seems like a sensible way to stop the slow public suicides of drug users, one of Renton’s long time legislators voted against moving this bill forward. Senator Hasegawa (11th district, Renton, Tukwila, Kent) voted no on letting it out of committee, even while the vast majority of his constituents are supporting it.
Senator Hasegawa has been a long-time friend of Renton, and I’m hoping he just needs to see the light on this bill. Please encourage Senator Hasegawa and others to support this bill, for the health and safety of our community and our state.
Senator Hasegawa’s email is Bob.Hasegawa@leg.wa.gov
Senator Hasagawa may have started as a friend of the worker, but he’s become a commie after his daughter married the owner of Upper Left Strategies.
Frankly, as an Asian, I’m disgusted by his recent vote. My family escaped people like him to come to America.
Wonder if Hasagawa is going to move to follow the redistricting. The man is a baizou.
love that word
Two people a day die just in King County? We *absolutely* must get these horrid politicians out of office just to save a life or two.
Is this the same subject that councilmembers Carmen Rivera, Ed Prince, and Ryan McIrvin wrote about? It’ ‘s a weird letter, but the gist was that they thought doing nothing about crime was the right way to go.
Yes, drug crime was one of the themes of the letter you are mentioning, which Bob Hasegawa also signed. The letter included this section:
“Criminalizing low level, non-violent offenses steals our opportunity to divert youth and guide them toward a better track. We have to make a down-payment on our youth because future generations deserve better from all of us. Otherwise, we will continue spiraling down to a community of cyclical outrage.”
The above words sound compassionate, unless you are a family member of one of the 300 people in King County who died from a fentanyl overdose since the time that letter was written. If you are one of those grieving families, you would likely be wishing your loved one was in a court-ordered rehab program right now. The fentanyl scourge could hit any of our families. My heart breaks for the loved ones of those who have overdosed.
If the letter-writers wanted to really help the problem, they would put energy into determining how our county and state health agencies could fund more rehab programs, and how we can direct people who have lost their good judgement into those programs. (A simple referral card has proven to not be enough). I am sure the entire community would get behind this.
theses fools shouldn’t pretend to have compassion when there’s bodies being stacked from their idiocy