California lawmakers target fentanyl as opioid overdoses surge

California lawmakers are responding to a surge in fentanyl overdoses and deaths of their cities with a listing of payments that embody imposing stronger penalties for distributing the artificial opioid and easing entry to safer consumption and therapy.

“There is no such thing as a doubt in my thoughts that the fentanyl epidemic is an pressing public well being disaster. There’s additionally little doubt in my thoughts that we’ve not acted with satisfactory urgency to deal with that,” stated Meeting Member Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine) throughout a press convention Tuesday to unveil Meeting Invoice 2246, a measure to strengthen punishment for distribution and possession. “I feel it’s vital for us as a Legislature to show the web page on that and act urgently now to guard our youngsters.”

The proposal would permit prosecutors to pursue a sentence of 20 years to life for many who distributed fentanyl that resulted in a lethal overdose, and would make it a felony to own 2 or extra grams of the opioid. The measure would additionally add sentence enhancements for promoting fentanyl in areas round kids or on social media. And it will classify fentanyl distributed for illicit use as a Schedule 1 drug, a label utilized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for narcotics that don’t have an appropriate medical use and are the probably to be abused.

“The underside line for me is we’ve to make sure that those that are making the most of the fentanyl disaster, those that are poisoning our youngsters, know that there are penalties and know that the punishment will match the crime,” Petrie-Norris stated.

Fentanyl habit has shortly turn out to be one of the regarding public well being crises within the nation. The extremely addictive artificial opioid is often utilized in medical settings to mitigate excessive ache. It’s as much as 100 occasions stronger than morphine, in keeping with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, rendering it extraordinarily harmful outdoors of a supervised medical setting. Even 2 milligrams might be deadly.

The drug helped drive lethal overdoses in america to greater than 100,000 over the 12-month interval to April 2021, in keeping with the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention — a rise of 28.5%.

California is not any stranger to the disaster. The state Division of Public Well being recorded 3,946 fentanyl-involved deaths in 2020. San Francisco recorded 98 overdose deaths in January and February of this 12 months, in keeping with a current health worker’s report, and most concerned fentanyl. The drug can also be behind alarming traits in Los Angeles County, the place lethal overdoses skyrocketed by 48% throughout the first 5 months of the pandemic in contrast with the identical interval in 2019, in keeping with the Public Well being Division.

Petrie-Norris’ invoice is amongst a flurry of proposals in Sacramento to deal with the issue.

Meeting Member James Ramos (D-Highland) needs to crack down on social media as a market for opioids with Meeting Invoice 1628, which might require corporations similar to Snapchat to implement insurance policies that prohibit the sale of fentanyl and different managed substances on their platforms. Ramos launched a second invoice to make overdose-reversing medicine Narcan extra out there and to arrange native overdose response groups by means of a state Division of Justice pilot program.

“Fentanyl is a lethal disaster ravaging our younger individuals, adults and our state,” Ramos stated throughout a January press convention.

One of many extra controversial efforts to curb overdoses and deaths is Senate Invoice 57, a measure to legalize in sure jurisdictions so-called secure injection websites, or areas the place adults can eat medicine in a supervised setting with educated employees. The proposal would authorize pilot applications in San Francisco, Oakland, town of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) stated SB 57 is a instrument to “scale back hurt, save lives and assist individuals get linked to therapy and providers.”

“The time has come for an all-hands-on-deck method to our overdose dying disaster, and secure consumption websites are a confirmed technique to avoid wasting lives,” Wiener stated in a January assertion.

Republicans have their very own concepts on the way to stem the disaster.

One invoice would require hospitals to check drug-screening urine samples for fentanyl; one other would require courts to advise people convicted of sure crimes in writing that it’s “extraordinarily harmful” to fabricate and distribute the drug and that, “if somebody dies consequently, the defendant might be charged with voluntary manslaughter or homicide.” A 3rd invoice would set up the California Fentanyl Abuse Process Pressure in efforts to gather knowledge on utilization and to ramp up public consciousness, and a separate measure would arrange a grant program below the California Well being and Human Providers Company for locals to battle the disaster.

Petrie-Norris stated it is not going to be simple to land her proposal on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. California Democrats have in recent times shied away from including penalties to the state’s penal code in favor of supporting rehabilitation and diversion applications. On Tuesday, a Republican-led invoice so as to add penalties for fentanyl possession did not move the Meeting Committee on Public Security.

Petrie-Norris stated it is necessary for legislators to stability rehabilitation with holding individuals accountable for the flood of unlawful fentanyl distribution in California.

“Even supposing this can be a commonsense proposal, we face an uphill battle to maneuver this by means of the Legislature,” she stated.

However Jeannette Zanipatin, California state director for the Drug Coverage Alliance, cautioned towards any proposal that mimics the “conflict on medicine” insurance policies of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties. Zanipatin stated growing penalties would funnel extra low-level sellers into jail or jail and would disproportionately have an effect on Black, Brown and Indigenous individuals.

“The priority is that when you introduce a measure like this that targets sellers, along with people feeling stigmatized, it actually pushes them extra underground,” Zanipatin stated. “We additionally see individuals have interaction in additional dangerous habits, which additionally results in extra people dying.”

She stated federal efforts to crack down on fentanyl trafficking haven’t performed a lot to curb its distribution and use. As an alternative of following go well with, Zanipatin stated, California ought to focus its efforts on community-based therapy fashions.

“The identical approaches with a distinct identify isn’t going to vary something,” she stated. “We now have to vary our method and do one thing that’s revolutionary and extra centered in harm-reduction approaches.”