Colorado drug dealers could spend decades in prison under proposed new law

DENVER — Drug sellers may spend a long time behind bars beneath a proposal Colorado lawmakers are contemplating.

Senate Invoice 23-109 would enable prosecutors to cost folks with a stage 1 drug felony if a drug they provide or distribute causes somebody to die from an overdose.

If convicted, they might be sentenced to as much as 32 years in jail.

State Senator Kyle Mullica, D-District 24, which is in Adams County, is among the invoice’s chief sponsors.

“Individuals are bored with seeing folks die,” stated Mullica. “They’re bored with dropping brothers and sisters, aunts, and uncles, little children, and buddies.”

The proposal, which Mullica is introducing with State Senator Byron Pelton, R-District 1, mirrors a legislation legislators handed final yr, which permits prosecutors to cost drug sellers for lethal fentanyl overdoses.

Mullica and Pelton’s proposal expands on that legislation by permitting prosecutors to additionally cost individuals who distribute Schedule 1 and a couple of medicine comparable to heroin, cocaine, and meth.

“Our objective is to actually attempt to make it possible for if somebody offers these medicine and kills somebody in our neighborhood, that there’s a vital consequence in order that that household has justice,” stated Mullica.

Legal guidelines that criminally punish drug sellers are controversial, and critics say they don’t work.

“Payments like SB23-109 received’t cease drug use and received’t save lives,” the ACLU of Colorado stated in a tweet. “It’s time we reject them – and focus as an alternative on actual, evidence-based options to the overdose disaster.”

Critics have referred to as comparable proposals “merciless” and “ineffective.”

They are saying individuals who provide and distribute medicine are sometimes addicted themselves and are being unfairly unpunished.

“I do not suppose it is merciless,” stated Mullica. “Individuals in our neighborhood dying, that is merciless. And it is merciless to them and it is merciless to their households and their family members they usually’re their buddies. And that is what we’re attempting to cease.”

One other criticism of payments like that is that individuals, usually different drug customers, who witness an overdose shall be too afraid to name 911 out of worry of being charged.

Mullica says language will possible be added to make sure that doesn’t occur.

“We’re working to make it possible for there are usually not unintended penalties from this,” stated Mullica. “However we do know listening to from our neighborhood that they need to see one thing performed. They’re bored with seeing folks die in our neighborhood.”

The senate judiciary committee will maintain a listening to on the invoice Monday at 1:30 p.m., the place lawmakers will hear testimony from folks on either side of this concern.