Seattle Mayor Proposes Drug Measure to Align With State Legislation, Including $27M for Therapy

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is asking members of the Metropolis Council who voted in opposition to adopting the state’s managed substance regulation to contemplate an amended plan.

Harrell is providing a proposal that will align the town’s code with new state regulation, making possession and public use of medication reminiscent of fentanyl, a gross misdemeanor. However it might additionally emphasize diversion and well being applications, and spend $27 million to pay for opioid remedy and associated services. Seattle noticed a 72% enhance in overdose deaths from 2021 to 2022.

The “bulletins characterize vital steps ahead towards a safer, more healthy Seattle, as we proceed to behave with urgency to construct out a daring health-first method, assist these in want, curtail impacts of public drug consumption, and maintain sellers and traffickers accountable,” Harrell mentioned in a press release Monday.

The Metropolis Council declined to undertake the brand new state regulation in a 5-4 June vote. Opponents mentioned the regulation might end in harsher enforcement, particularly for low-income folks and folks of shade, and will revitalize the conflict on medication.

Harrell’s plan comes after he appointed a activity power — together with Metropolis Council members and public security consultants — to additional work on the measure for a month. The $27 million would come from settlement cash the town acquired from opioid lawsuits, Harrell mentioned.

The measure additionally informs police that “diversion, remedy, and different alternate options to reserving are the popular method,” and instructs them to contemplate “whether or not the person, by means of their actions and conduct, presents a menace of hurt” to themselves or others earlier than arrests are made on both cost, The Seattle Instances reported.

“This package deal is a balanced method to reply to the disaster fentanyl has delivered to our streets,” Councilmember Andrew Lewis mentioned Monday in a press release. “This laws, that I’ll co-sponsor, responds to the wants I laid out at first of this course of and provides our first responders the instruments they should divert to providers the place attainable and make arrests when crucial.”

Lewis was the swing vote that precipitated the June measure to fail, KUOW reported.

The Washington law signed by Gov. Jay Inslee in Could struck a stability between public order and compassion for folks battling substance abuse, lawmakers mentioned on the time.

Legislators had been below stress to move a invoice this 12 months as a result of a brief regulation that made intentional drug possession unlawful was because of expire July 1. Except the Legislature handed a brand new regulation, drug possession would have been decriminalized below state regulation.

The state regulation makes it a gross misdemeanor punishable by as much as six months in jail for the primary two drug possession offenses and as much as a 12 months after that. However police and prosecutors can be inspired to divert instances for remedy or different providers. The state measure offers $44 million for investments that embody methadone cell items, disaster facilities and short-term housing for folks with substance use issues.

The short-term measure was accepted by state lawmakers after the Washington Supreme Courtroom in 2021 struck down as unconstitutional the state regulation making drug possession a felony as a result of it didn’t require prosecutors to show somebody knowingly had the medication. Washington was the one state within the nation with out that requirement.

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