Seattle Police have made drug busts for years — including this alleged dealer in an operation a decade ago downtown. The bill up for vote Tuesday could bring a crackdown on lower level drug crimes in the city. (Image: SPD)
The Seattle City Council will vote on a proposal Tuesday afternoon that would allow the city to do something it has never done before — prosecute drug use and possession on Seattle’s streets.
With a new state law in place making low level drug crimes in Washington a gross misdemeanor and giving the state a harder stance on drug law penalties, Tuesday’s vote would open the door to Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison’s plan to act on the new status of the crimes with the King County Prosecutor’s office already slammed with more serious drug dealing and felony cases.
The move could represent a major step away from decades of efforts to better address drugs and addiction through treatment and services.
Sponsored by Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen, the bill would make possession of controlled substances and use of controlled substances in a public place a gross misdemeanor. It would codify the City Attorney’s responsibility for prosecuting gross misdemeanor drug use and possession in Seattle, a move that city council analysis says would produce an unknown increase in cases handled by the office — and costs related to the prosecution.
“The number of cases charged would be the primary driver of costs, and the decision whether to charge a case lies within the discretion of the prosecuting authority,” the analysis (PDF) reads. “The more cases charged, the more costs are likely to increase.”
Without a committee hearing to shape the legislation, Tuesday will mark the first time the proposed bill will be up for public debate in front of any of the councilmembers.
A council memo on the proposal says the city could potentially face costs even if the legislation doesn’t pass Tuesday. Under the new state law, Seattle could be on the hook for paying for prosecution of gross misdemeanor drug crimes if the county decided to pick up the cases. But that outcome is unlikely given the county prosecutor’s focus on dealing and distribution.
How the crackdown on public drug use and possession would be policed and enforced will also be part of the debate Tuesday. Under state law, officers have the discretion to refer violators to treatment if programs exist. Resources robust enough to handle what could be a massive spike in need aren’t yet in place in the city and recent attempts to include stronger treatment plans in the city budget have been cut.
Council analysis of the proposal also concludes that the change would have major racial and equity impacts. “It is well established that the criminal legal system disproportionately impacts communities of color, especially Black and Indigenous communities,” council staff analysis of the bill reads. “In general, the state’s decision to increase criminalization of the knowing possession or use in a public place of unprescribed or illegal controlled substances from a simple to a gross misdemeanor will have disproportionate impacts on those communities.”
“As related to enforcement, the more cases that are prosecuted by either the City or County prosecutors, the more likely it is that communities of color will experience disproportionate impacts,” it concludes. “Given the shortage of substance use treatment and services, even if parties in the criminal legal system wanted to divert cases, there may not be anywhere to divert.”
The bill comes amid continued efforts for the city to address its ongoing crises of homelessness and street disorder and under the growing impact of increasing addiction and overdoses due to the wide availability of relatively cheap and powerful drugs like fentanyl. Around 100 people a month have died of drug overdoses or alcohol poisoning in King County so far in 2023, totals officials say will continue to rise.
UPDATE: District 3 representative for Capitol Hill and the Central District Kshama Sawant has blasted the proposal.
“The bill is stunningly divorced from the conclusions of scientific and statistical evidence that addiction is a public health issue, and requires public health solutions,” Sawant said. “The bill does not include one penny for treatment services, and will ultimately divert more and more public resources towards imprisoning poor people and Black and Brown people, rather than helping people with addiction gain access to services proven to help, such as methadone clinics, let alone addressing the crisis of poverty by taxing the wealthy to fully fund education, housing, healthcare, and living-wage jobs.”
In her statement, Sawant also blasts “Democratic” councilmembers Nelson and Pedersen for introducing the bill and empowering “Republican City Attorney Ann Davison to decide when to prosecute and criminalize instead of referring someone to treatment for addiction” while calling for the prosecution of “Big Pharma billionaires who have made hundreds of billion dollars from selling dangerous opioids.”
UPDATE x2: With the body’s more centrist members splitting their possible swing votes, the council voted against the bill 5-4 in a session that stretched nearly 4 hours from its 2 PM start and featured Council President Debora Juarez frequently calling for quiet in the chambers as people opposing the legislation clapped, whistled, and booed.
Teresa Mosqueda, Tammy Morales, and Sawant voted against the bill as expected while bill sponsors Nelson, Pedersen, and President Juarez held tight to their “yes” positions.
More center-leaning Councilmember Lisa Herbold of West Seattle joined the “no” group saying she was prepared to support the legislation until Davison’s decision last week to end the city’s Community Court program, a potentially key diversion resource that Herbold said could have been the foundation for building much needed support for treatment into the city’s approach to drug prosecution.
Dan Strauss, representing Ballard, threw his vote in support of passing the bill. But downtown’s Andrew Lewis, the council’s third more center-leaning member, killed the bill, voting no even as he said he would eventually support the move to enable the prosecution at the city attorney level but not without a better structure and resources for treatment and diversion also put into place.
“It’s more important than whether I stay on this dias,” Lewis, one of the few incumbents seeking reelection to remain on the council, said about his vote Tuesday.
While the bill’s defeat ends for now efforts to move low-level drug prosecution into Davison’s city attorney office, Seattle Police can continue to arrest people for the crimes and refer offenders to the county for possible charges.
Following the vote, Davison spun the decision in a media statement, claiming “Seattle will now be the only municipality in the State of Washington where it is legal to use hard drugs in public.”
Councilmember Herbold responded Tuesday night, calling Davison’s statements “an inexcusable mischaracterization of the law.”
“As a result of Governor Inslee’s special session, the legislature approved a bill that adopts a statewide standard of gross misdemeanor for both possession and public consumption,” Herbold writes. “This means that there is now a clear, statewide standard, and there is not a patchwork of differing regulations across the state.”
The new state law will be effective in Seattle on July 1.
“Nothing the Council does, or does not do, can affect that,” Herbold said.
UPDATE x3: Some of the candidates the District 3 seat Sawant will leave behind weighed in on the drug prosecution bill. Candidate Ry Armstrong spoke against the bill during public comment and called the bill “a pathetic excuse for legislation called the War on Drugs.” Andrew Ashiofu also posted a statement about the bill, saying, “As a black man I know my history and how this was used to attack and punish the community. As a queer person this is harmful and dangerous.” Candidate Alex Hudson, meanwhile, shared a column critical of the legislation by Seattle Times writer Naomi Ishisaka headlined This is exactly how not to fix the fentanyl crisis. Joy Hollingsworth, leading the race so far in contributions and a cannabis industry professional, did not publicly weigh in on the proposal.
UPDATE x4: In response to CHS’s inquiry, candidate Hollingsworth called for increased harm reduction strategies, mental health services, emergency shelters, and diversion methods as she criticized a “War on Drugs” approach to the fentanyl crisis. “I want people who are experiencing drug disorders to get the best treatment and care they possibly can,” Hollingsworth said Tuesday. “That pathway might be different for everyone, but what I do know, is we have to do something and stop being so numb to what’s going on in our community.”
Since 2012, I've been working on repairing the War on Drug policies and harm it has done. In 2020, we wrote, advocated and implemented Social Equity HB2870 and reinvesting cannabis tax dollars into Black communities who were the target of these https://t.co/gSrHP5pFtg
— Joy For Seattle (@JoyForSeattle) June 7, 2023
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Lol is there really any doubt as to how the council will vote?
“In general, the state’s decision to increase criminalization of the knowing possession or use in a public place of unprescribed or illegal controlled substances from a simple to a gross misdemeanor will have disproportionate impacts on those communities.”
Got it…so we can’t address the fentanyl problem because of racism.
Found the racist
and I found the chad incapable of nuance.
Your conclusory comment is devoid of nuance.
Deflect, Ignore, Excuse.
This appears to be an editorial, with bias against any enforcement of drug laws expressed throughout. While the costs of enforcement are stressed in this article I suggest looking also at the cost of non-enforcement:
Addicts on the street support their habits via continual daily shoplifting and other crimes. This has cost us our downtown and SODO tax base, our businesses, our personal safety. Businesses like Emanuel Carpets, here for over a century, have left citing the drug-fueled crime wave. Others like Bergman Luggage, another legacy Seattle business, left because of crime and the unwillingness of employees to work downtown with fears of unsafety after attacks outside and inside the stores. Likewise the London Plane…the list goes in and on.
Meanwhile, under the current policy of acceptance and encouragement of public drug use we are losing more people to daily overdoses than to Covid. There is zero proof that harm reduction and enablement is working to reduce drug use: instead it is making the drug crisis worse on our streets.
Bingo. I just for once would like to hear from one local progressive that the current laws are absolute garbage and don’t help anybody. The tax payers or the addicts.
> Addicts on the street support their habits via continual daily shoplifting and other crimes.
We could solve this crime issue by giving fentanyl away to everyone who needs it. Fentanyl is cheap – much cheaper than dealing with petty shoplifting.
Ooh then we can all play “is that fentanyl or a breath mint?” as we wrestle little blue pills out of our children’s hands and dog’s mouths, which I assume will be dumped occasionally like the free needles that we give to people who “need” them. Or skip that step and just launch the pills indiscriminately from parade floats using t-shirt launchers. Why not have fun with it?
I am not proposing anything more radical than a methadone clinic. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of a safe consumption site?
but is Seattle ready for a crackdown on drug use and possession on its streets?
Yes. This and related issues are at the top of the list of concerns for the citizens of Seattle in poll after poll. About time the council paid attention IMO.
“The move could represent a major step away from decades of efforts to better address drugs and addiction through treatment and services.”
I’d like to see the data on whether these efforts have been successful, because while I haven’t seen the stats on drug use and addiction, the reporting has been that homelessness has only increased on a yearly basis despite the money we constantly give to address it. I’m not saying criminalization is the answer, but it’s frustrating that city council seems impotent at actually solving the underlying issues, despite all the lip service they give toward wanting to do so. I went to UVillage recently and there were dozens of cops protecting those fancy shops. Why aren’t there regular patrols in high drug use areas?
And while the progressive line that giving people rights doesn’t take away your rights sure sounds nice, it’s simply not true. Residents should not have to have campers living outside their houses, and home owners trying to sell are having to lower their home values because people don’t want to move into homes with four RV’s parked outside. The amount of open drug use has lead to so much street harassment by people out of their minds that my building had to have a public safety meeting to address the concerns.
Enforcement of drug laws disproportionately affects…people who use and sell illegal drugs, particularly in public (because that is where it’s easiest to get caught, and also most annoying to everybody else).
If more black and brown people choose (yes, choose) to use and sell illegal drugs in public, that is up to them, but actions have consequences.
Disparity does not equate to discrimination.
Why is this so hard for some people to wrap their heads around?
Because DEI and social justice as religious belief.
Decades of evidence from justice systems across the country show that laws like these are not applied equally. It is the enforcement of the law that is selective and unequal, not the violation of the law.
This is like saying New York’s stop and frisk policy applied equally to everybody because white or black, you choose to look suspicious in public. The reality is the cops stopped people of color wildly more often than white people. And what you are saying is that the explanation for this is probably that this is fine because those people were probably just doing more crimes.
Oh Kshama, you just don’t get it. This isn’t about getting drug addicts into treatment. We all know that you can’t force people into treatment so funding for services is completely irrelevant. This isn’t about drug addicts at all. This is about protecting the rest of us from people who knowingly and willingly impact the community with their irresponsible decisions. We have a law that states you can’t smoke a cigarette within 25′ of a doorway yet we are supposed to be ok with someone lighting up fentanyl because they have an addiction? It’s not ok and the fact you think we should just accept being exposed to toxic substances in the name of compassion is just another reason why I am glad you won’t be around any longer come Nov.
+1 million
Spot on. Clean up this city! Enough already!
I sort of hope this Council rejects this provision to increase the energy and focus around removing Councilmembers who vote “No.” November is coming, and although I don’t like the weather, I am looking forward to cleaning house.
Now we know who to defeat in November. Councilmember Lewis is numero uno in that regard.
I’ll just sit here and wait for the 50, going on 60, year old “War on Drugs” to have its first positive effect on society.
Just saying. Most all the people I are passing out and using needles or smoking fentanyl in the public way or transit are white. So it’s about the drug problem not about who’s doing it. The status quo is not working so hopefully they land on some kind of solution and also a path to treatment because just ticketing them or arrests cannot be the sole cause. However the land of no consequences does need to improve.
Do people really think this would have helped? you realize our jails are full, courts are backed up, prosecutors overwhelmed, and nonviolent crime deprioritized by the whole justice system here right? you really, really think bumping the severity up by one notch would suddenly magic all these folks off the streets?
what would have actually happened: absolutely nothing except in situations where a person commits another crime they would already be arrested for, they would get a slightly harsher sentence IF charged and convicted. This would do NOTHING to fix the problem of people blasting fentanyl on the streets. so don’t pretend the ongoing multi-factor crisis is because the city council pointed out this measure makes no sense and voted accordingly.
Vote out these clowns and the leftist ideological bullsh.*t that is destroying lives and the quality of life in this city.
Oh, wonderful, we will now continue to have an epidemic of rampant drug use (without consequences) on our streets.
Given the current makeup of the City Council, this vote was no surprise. I hope the bill will come up for another vote once a more-centrist Council is in place late this year. All members except Nelson and Pedersen should be thrown out of office. I will not vote for any candidate who will not support this bill. As for D3, I will vote for Alex Hudson, since she is the only one (so far) who appears to support the legislation. And I’ll be sending in my “Democracy Vouchers” to her immediately.
Alex Pedersen is not running for reelection. And the article strongly implies that Alex Hudson opposed this legislation rather than supporting it. I will not be supporting her to replace Sawant in D3, for this position and several others. Perhaps Hollingsworth, who was silent on this legislation, which is probably the best we can expect from any D3 council candidate.
Glenn, thanks for the correction about Pedersen. It’s a pity that he isn’t running for re-election, as he is one of the few voices of reason the current Council.
I misread what the article says about Alex Hudson’s position on this bill. You are correct, thanks.
These progressive, extreme left leaning city council members operate like incompetent parents, confusing compassion and permissiveness, unable to maintain boundaries, producing the exact opposite result of what they claimed they want for their constituents
I am a 25 year Seattle voter. I’ve always taken a holistic approach when selecting the candidate that I most align with. This year, I am an issue voter. Whoever prioritizes removing public camping, prohibiting blatant public drug use in shared spaces, and making communities safer will get my support and vote.
Allowing rampant drug use in public is inhumane for everyone in our city.
To the people that say it’s racist to enforce drug laws: do you not care about minorities dying and suffering from drugs? Drug laws exist to protect, not harm. I’m not saying users need to be locked up in jail, but some form of mandated treatment for repeated open drug usage seems like the common sense option here. Why don’t we fund treatment for these suffering humans.
Perhaps they realize the opioids effect mostly the whites and they would like them to die off with the type of suffering POC went through in the 80’s and 90’s. Cruel I know, but sometimes it’s sadly just a case of schadenfreude.