It's a war zone.
Every day's a war zone.
Fatal drug overdoses are on the rise in Washington.
And the deadline for the state
to deal with a temporary fix to our drug possession laws is approaching fast.
It doesn't work. It hasn't worked.
Law enforcement agencies say their hands have been tied
for two years and there's growing demand for more accountability.
We need the proper leverage to get these folks into treatment.
Substance use disorder is a public health issue.
Can Olympia strike the right balance this session?
Almost everyone agrees that the war on drugs was a failure.
We hear from the experts the system needs to be there to make this work.
Laying down the law on illegal drug possession while treating the trauma
of addiction. Next on City Inside-Out.
Welcome to this edition of City Inside-Out.
I'm your host Brian Callanan
with the Blake Decision in February of 2021.
Our state Supreme Court determined Washington's drug
possession felony law was unconstitutional.
State lawmakers responded with a temporary measure
that April, which requires police to offer drug treatment options
to people twice before a misdemeanor arrest , can be made.
But that temporary law, which has had mixed results, is set to expire on
July 1st this year, creating a high stakes showdown at the state capitol.
What's the right balance between providing treatment and justice?
A policy decision on drug possession is coming in a matter of months
that will impact our state for decades to come.
My life was a mess.
These are the stories of survivors.
I ended up addicted to methamphetamine.
Those who have come back from the ledge of drug addiction.
I turned to what I knew.
Drugs and sex.
They are stories all too familiar to Josh Wallace
because he has a story,
too, dating back to when he was growing up in the Seattle area.
At that point in my life, I really just didn't want to exist.
Wallace says he was raped as a young man and started taking ecstasy
and methamphetamine as a way to deal with his trauma.
He was homeless for six years and arrested for felony drug possession in 2005.
Every day is a war zone and the police are not your friends
and you know, the courts are not your friends.
But Wallace did find a friend in the form of a peer who shared
his addiction experience from a nonprofit now known as Peer Washington.
He convinced Wallace to go to drug court, where he took on his mental health
challenges, too.
So drug court, in combination with this organization, is what saved my life.
So what I'm going to have you do right now is our little intake on our IPad
Peer Washington now helps nearly 2500 people across the state each year.
Led by Josh Wallace, who is now its president and CEO.
These are intramuscular little locks on kids.
He points to King County records that show a 75% reduction
in jail bookings for participants in peer Washington's services.
But the future of these types of services is a bit unclear.
I needed help.
Wallace is advocating in Olympia this session with a major deadline
fast approaching, the state Supreme Court's Blake decision of 2021
found that Washington's drug possession felony statute was unconstitutional.
State lawmakers responded soon after
by making drug possession a misdemeanor that requires police officers
to offer treatment to suspects twice before making an arrest.
Our experiment with the effective legalization of drugs has failed.
But that legal framework, which many law enforcement officers say has kept them
from doing their jobs and has not helped place more people in treatment,
was a temporary fix that expires in July of this year.
We need tools to get individuals into treatment and keep our communities
and our kids safe.
As Olympia crafts a permanent path forward this spring.
Wallace wants lawmakers to focus on treatment,
not criminal punishment, as a way to protect
the health of his clients and the entire state.
This is going to make the difference for many, many years to come as to whether
or not we are lifting people up and out of addiction
or whether we're going to double down on this war
on drugs and continue to put so much money into harming people.
A lot of people say to me, why did you legalize drugs?
We didn't legalize drugs, but that's the perception that's out there.
And after a while, perception becomes reality.
State Senator June Robinson, the Democrat from the 38th District in Everett,
says the stopgap measure the legislature passed two years ago during a nationwide
racial reckoning was an attempt to truly end the war on drugs.
But she admits it hasn't been effective.
It doesn't work. It hasn't worked.
We need the proper leverage to get these folks into treatment.
Substance use disorder is a public health issue.
And while state leaders have debated whether to make drug possession
a felony again or decriminalize it altogether,
it appears Olympia will land on the option.
Robinson is sponsoring Senate Bill 5536.
We need a balance between compassion and accountability.
5536 would make drug possession a gross misdemeanor,
but officers would be required to offer pre-booking drug treatment options.
In some cases, those who do end up getting charged
could complete treatment and get those charges dropped.
It definitely puts a criminal penalty in there, but also recognizes
that substance use disorder is a disease
that needs treatment, and we're trying to offer those opportunities.
Robinson's measure has received bipartisan support
and importantly, the support of several law enforcement agencies.
The path to eventual recovery should likely lead to dismissal of the charge.
Josh Wallace says he understands
a gross misdemeanor may be the likely political compromise, but he's worried
the legal pendulum may be swinging back towards criminalizing drug addiction.
I see all the old systems wanting to double down on all the same
old broken processes amidst a nationwide crisis
where drug overdose deaths have quintupled in the past 20 years.
Olympia has a serious decision ahead as the deadline
looms to fix our state's drug possession law before July 1st.
I'm very hopeful that we can find a good solution.
Let's make this bill right
so that we can move forward in a way that's
going to be beneficial for all Washingtonians.
And joining us to give us some more background
on this very complex issue I have in the studio with me Steve Strachan,
He's the executive director
of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
Steve, good to see you again. Good to see you.
And also we have with us over Zoom Lisa Daugaard,
She is co-executive director of the Public Defender Association.
Lisa, good to see you, too.
Great to be here.
All right. Let's jump right into it.
Before we get into some of the changes that Olympia is considering here,
I want to start with where we are now, the present day landscape
of law enforcement and drug possession.
So the Blake decision happened two years ago.
The legislature did this temporary fix by making drug possession a misdemeanor,
but officers are required to offer treatment twice before making an arrest.
Steve, just from the point of view of law enforcement, has that worked?
Short answer. No, it hasn't.
We understand the legislature's intent.
A lot of these conversations were happening already about how to
how to approach this issue differently.
But the the sort of forced, you know, rapid decision that the legislator
legislature made with, I think, good intentions really has been problematic.
And what we're seeing is, is feedback from from jurisdictions
where they're making over the last two years, hundreds of contacts
with persons, with addiction issues.
And I think I had one jurisdiction that said that they had one person
take them up on treatment.
So if the goal is to get people into treatment, first
and foremost, this current system is certainly not working.
And you're certainly seeing the increases in overdose.
Overdose deaths.
Yeah, that's,
you know, real data and real human lives that I think show it isn't working.
In terms of what we're doing right now, thanks a lot for that, Steve.
Lisa, I want to get your take on the current situation
for drug possession in our state.
I've heard some critics
say the past two years have been a failed experiment in legalizing drugs.
How do you look at what's been going on?
Well, we have a short memory.
We have decades of failed a drug policy.
And actually, I think there's why I agree there was quite agreement
before the decision that we needed
to make a paradigm shift in the way that we approach these problems.
To be clear, we have a drug use crisis.
We have a crisis of despair.
This is national.
It is not limited to Washington state.
It is not caused by the change in the legal framework that we saw
after the Blake decision.
But I agree with Steve.
You know, back in
2020, early 2021,
we were deep in a consensus building
process about what kind of policy framework Washington
state should choose to move past the war on drugs
going back a couple of years.
Almost everyone agrees that the war on drugs was a failure.
It isn't that the failings started in 2021 after the Blake decision.
Yeah.
As a society,
we've been on the wrong courts for a long, long time, and most people agree.
Most law enforcement officers agree.
Most prosecutors.
The question is, what are we going to put in its place?
And the thing is, you can't turn the ocean liner around on a dime.
Unfortunately, in 2021, the legislature had a matter of weeks
to put something in place that just wasn't.
We did not have the deliberative process
that the complexity of these issues requires.
Thank you for that.
And, Lisa, I want to make sure we move on to this next piece.
We're focusing on Senate Bill 5536 with this show,
which would make drug possession a gross misdemeanor.
But officers would be required to offer
some pre-booking options for drug treatment services.
So this middle ground, not decriminalizing drug possession
but not making it a felony again,
appears to be where the momentum in Olympia is going right now.
Do you think this strikes the right balance between the need for justice
and the need for services to treat drug addiction?
Well, my organization and I have learned,
but we have long believed that pushing people into the criminal
legal system is almost never helpful in stabilization or recovery.
That said, but we understand why you can't just
overnight remove the approach that we've had
when we don't have an alternative paradigm to put in its place without honestly
creating a lot of false nostalgia for the way things used to be.
The fact is that the most urgent thing we need to do is to create
community based care that everyone can refer people
to connect people to that works, including police officers.
Police officers.
You encounter people in need and they do need a path that's accessible to them.
Effective, credible.
And we don't we don't have that.
And so they're right in saying,
I don't know what I'm supposed to do and I need a path.
Right. Right.
I guess, Steve, in looking about this, what do you think about 5536?
You brought up some accountability issues earlier with this whole system.
Does this solve some of those problems? What do you think?
You know, everything we're talking about is is that intersection
of the criminal justice system
and issues related to addiction
and behavioral health, which usually are co-occurring.
And look at all the issues that they create for public safety,
for obviously human lives
and and things that we're seeing right now in our society,
just in terms of of the issues that are of concern to people.
And the points that Lisa make are excellent.
You know, it is it is an ocean liner.
And these conversations did precede the Blake decision.
That's absolutely correct.
And I think law enforcement is among the first to say, how do we do this better?
You know, and one of the ways I view this and the bill that you're asking about
in this complex these complex decisions
the legislature now has to make is
how do we we've always sort of,
I guess, viewed this societally going back decades as punishment first,
then treatment maybe if it's available and all the issues
related to the availability of treatment.
This switches those two around.
And instead of saying, well, no punishment and no incentive to
to stop using and to do something else, you know, it's still there,
but it's really as the back up to treatment.
And it puts treatment first, in my opinion, is
I mean, one of the reasons I'm here
and one of the reasons we're supportive of these bills is we understand
exactly what Lisa is talking about in terms of putting treatment and access
to treatment first with punishment when needed and when necessary.
But that's not the first preference.
Thank you. And Lisa, maybe you can break this down for us.
What would things actually look like if 5536 gets passed?
Let's say a person gets stopped for drug possession.
What happens when that person accepts treatment and completes it?
And then what also happens if that person does not accept treatment
or does not complete it? Can you take us down those two paths, please?
Sure.
Well, I think, you know, it's far from clear
that the current form of this bill is where the legislature is going to end up.
It's written. It does continue.
It does not mandate, but it continues to encourage police officers to make
diversion
to community based care as a first strategy.
So there is no and that's for me, the most important feature
and something that Bill really gets right.
It does not require that anybody go into the court system.
And if police officers have a diversion
channel available, they're encouraged to use it.
I do want to comment on this concept of treatment.
The fact is that how people recover it is not very American to want,
you know, a simple transaction that and in a way that's the that's the
the button that arrest pushes we did something
but treatment is a long recovery, I should say.
It's a long process.
Increasingly, our field completely acknowledges that recovery is
based on relationships, that that isn't some transactional 14 day,
30 day, six month event.
Rather, it is based on people regaining hope
for their lives to have meaning for them to be safe and secure, a realistic path
for that to happen, and gaining strength to make hard choices
that require
overcoming the impulse for self-sabotage and all of the things that trauma
causes and challenges that most of us face when we're trying
to break habits that that we use to cope with life's traumas.
So we have to understand that
the course of recovery is not something that you fail or succeed at.
Almost nobody who ever addresses substance use issues
does so in a way that is, you know, one and done.
And we need to be very careful that when people are all
have have embarked on that process that we're continuing
to support and reinforce and don't blow up their progress
by breaking them on purpose, which is usually what criminal.
Punishment does that.
All of what I just said is something that law enforcement in this state has
repeatedly proven
that they can embrace.
So law enforcement can be partners in a paradigm
that is based in community care and where law enforcement is just
exchanging information and continuously reinforcing.
People's path to recovery legislation can
make that possible.
But we need investments in community based care strategies to make it happen
and legislation can make it impossible.
And that's what I really hope
to see in this session, is just that we don't have legislative impediments
to the kind of work
that we already have in that there's an arrest and Jail Alternatives
program that Steve's organization hosts that's really effective.
Lead is popular and effective.
We just need to grow those things,
and we're going to talk about that in just a little bit.
Steve, you had your hand up for a second.
I I'm just going to say, I appreciate Lisa's comment
about how law enforcement has embraced a lot of this.
I think that's really true.
And again, that can support and to underline this is not a binary choice.
This is not let's go back to the war on drugs or let's legalize all drugs.
This is about that complex that complex system
that will allow law enforcement to be one of the stakeholders
to provide the support to do everything that Lisa just talked about.
Yeah.
And both Representative Rapp
or excuse me, Senator Robinson's bill and Senator Solomon's bill,
both of which are really good bills and have some good content.
And kudos to both senators for their work on this.
Is it it reflects what Lisa just talked about,
which is this is not a magic washing machine.
You know, this is
this is human beings with complex issues that go back a long time
and that I think law enforcement recognizes the criminal justice system
and putting somebody into a system that can create long term records,
long term issues that sometimes make these problems worse.
Yeah.
How do we make this all work together while still holding that sanction,
which I think is absolutely necessary for those who simply say,
I have no interest and I'm going to continue
to do what I'm doing, that's really where we are.
And I wanted to talk about that because I think within this bill,
there's the provision that says, okay, let's say you are charged
in situations where that person is able to complete treatment.
Those charges can be vacated, they can be nullified.
And that's where that super important.
But I wanted to take it that one step further with you, Steve,
because I know some Senate Republicans out there are saying this gross
misdemeanor is not enough.
It won't compel people to actually take treatment.
Is this going to turn the tables
so that jurisdiction where only one person is taking up treatment,
are more people going to take up treatment with this kind of system?
Yeah, that's that's that's a critical question, too.
Everything we're talking about is use the word compel.
Incentivize is another way to look, but it's for that that sanction
is really reserved in the system we're talking about right now are the proposals.
As for those who simply say, no, I'm not going to do anything,
I'm not interested in treatment.
It doesn't require them to do this all in a week.
It recognizes the challenges of addiction, but it also respects victims of crime
and those affected by some of these things related to these problems.
Yeah, and I think it's a good balance.
Getting back to your question,
the felony is the way it used to be, right?
Gross misdemeanor, I think, is a reasonable compromise
because it is still a significant sanction.
And one of the issues, it's a little inside baseball,
but what we've seen sometimes
is that if the sanction is not severe enough with a misdemeanor, that a
a an attorney sometimes and working with our client will say,
hey, take the three days
or take the four days in jail rather than going through treatment.
Well, that's exactly the opposite of what we're looking for.
And when I say we, I mean society, not law enforcement.
Yeah.
And so this sanction has to be significant without it becoming another
criminalization and punitive. Yeah.
And that's the balance we have to strike.
Thank you for that.
And Lisa, I wanted to go back to you and talk about this
availability of treatment piece, because I think it's a key
part of some of these solutions that are thought about with 5536.
There have to be facilities for people
to go to get the services they need to deal with drug addiction.
There need to be enough service providers to do we have enough services now.
Is the state investing enough in this side of the equation?
What can you tell us?
I can say that we don't.
One of the important developments over the last year
was the Substance Abuse and Recovery Services Advisory Committee.
The SEC
made recommendations about innovations in care
that are really important to implement no matter what
the formal legal framework is that is chosen.
I will say one of those that I think
is, you know, we know advances the ball is investment
in case management and in the pre-booking diversion context.
Like LEAD like the arrest and jail alternatives
that Steve's organization administers diversion program.
Those are not those are very popular.
They work well where they exist around the state and they're not scaled anywhere.
So most people who would benefit from them don't have access to them.
And we can change that. We know what to do.
We're just not doing it anywhere near scale.
I do want to say that so housing is part of treatment.
Access to good mental health care is part of treatment.
This isn't all about biochemical reactions.
This is about people trying to survive under really miserable circumstances.
Yeah,
but I don't think I think we
when I say that memory is short.
Drug possession has been a felony
in Washington State for decades until 2021,
and it never worked to compel people into recovery.
And it did a lot of harm. I. I
do. You know,
we have to try making
recovery services available to people.
And before we conclude that people will not voluntarily
accept those offers, and that is just not happening at this at this point.
Yeah.
And I wanted to get into some of these logistics
with you, Steve, in terms of having these service treatment facilities
available, even having the testing available for these different cases.
There's some logistics issues here, right?
Correct.
And it's again, it's an intersection
of the criminal justice system with due process requirements,
with an issue of getting people healthy and off the street.
And they're not incompatible.
But it's a complex it's a complex balance that we have to find.
For example, if a crime is a gross misdemeanor with drug possession
and it goes to a crime lab, our crime lab is backed up months in our state.
They have other priorities, including things like homicide
and sexual assaults, which make sense.
But because of due process, there may be a timing issue which again
complicates this.
So we have to find a way to address that constitutionally
if there is a criminal sanction and related to all these things.
And I'll go back to Lisa's point, because she's exactly right.
The system needs to be there to make this work.
And there's there are staffing shortages and there's costs and there's
infrastructure and all those things that make this heavy lifting.
But it is absolutely critical if we're going to do this.
Otherwise, the rest of this is sort of tangential
to having availability to the resources that Lisa talks about.
Yeah.
And I really think about a root issue here.
And Steve, maybe I can start with you on this one.
Just the rise in overdose deaths that we have seen around our country,
certainly here in our state, more than 2000 overdose deaths
in 2021, a 66% increase from 2019.
And I know officers are encountering
drug overdose deaths every day in these different cases.
Do you think the work the legislature is doing here, fixing
the Blake decision will have an impact on that crisis?
It absolutely will.
Absolutely it will.
And it is this toxic mix of increase in availability
to availability to fentanyl, which is incredibly deadly.
Ease of
access to a lot of other substances as well.
The Blake decision, you know, lack of resources.
I mean, all these things are combining the overdose, overdose, deaths are up.
I always think about bike officers that I've worked with in my career
as a chief and a sheriff who are out dealing with folks every day.
And again, their goal was not to make arrests, to put people in jail.
Their goal was to help people, to get them healthy and off the street.
And it's heartbreaking.
I mean, law enforcement wants the tools
to do these things that we're talking about.
And these changes in the Blake decision are really driven toward
providing the tools, the infrastructure to get people healthy and off the street
and not just let them die in the street.
That's not compassionate. Yeah,
short answer to your question.
This these bills that Senator Robinson or Senator Solomon are working
on, will they make a difference?
I absolutely think they will. Yeah.
Lisa, your take on this just this intersection
between what we're dealing with with a nationwide drug crisis
and what the legislature is working on here with this bleak fix.
Right.
I mean, Washington, going back to the beginning of 2021,
I would say, was at the absolute forefront of national sort of
a shift in the national approach to these problems.
And we unfortunately kind of tripped over our feet because
a court decision interfered with the timeline of consensus building.
But we do know how to do this.
This can be done.
People do recover
substance use, psychoactive substance use, trauma recovery.
These are almost universal human experiences.
This is not something that's it's not people who are victimized and people
these are problems almost everyone encounters
or a loved one encounters in the course of our lifetime.
And we know what actually, you know, what's the best we can do.
We know what that is. We are not.
We need to match public policy and investment to what we already have
established, works well and builds partnership.
You know, we do not need to be on different sides of this.
Everyone shouldn't be on the same side here.
And I think that this session, you know, it was just the task of can we get back
on the same side? Yeah,
there is going to be a criminal sanction available.
Yeah.
The challenge to people who do the work that I do
is can we persuade law enforcement to use that?
Rarely, because there is something else.
And to the legislature and they give us the resources
so that those alternatives are immediately available and very compelling
so that officers are not put in that last resort except in very outlying cases.
And thank you, Lisa.
You're going down the path that I need to with you here,
because we're we're needing to wrap up 30 more seconds, if you could.
Any final words to the legislature?
I know they're wrestling with a lot here.
Some final thoughts for them to wrap up the show.
Build on what we already have
scale , lead and arrest and jail alternatives, and don't mandate
anyone to do the wrong thing under the circumstances.
Got it.
Steve, need to wrap up here
as the legislature works on this and final thoughts.
I'll just dovetail on what Lisa just said.
A lot of acronyms, AJA Lead excuse me, mental health field response.
The legislature entrusted us
WASPC to help administer
those programs, and we've been doing it for years.
They've been growing each year. They're successful.
They're success stories.
This is a version of that very thing.
Law enforcement and the other stakeholders have been working on this already.
This will expand this.
So in some ways, this is an opportunity.
There's a model out there, and I do feel that the legislature will do good things.
We have more work to do.
But again, I think the senators I mentioned
and others are doing good work.
And I think we're going in a direction where we can do something productive.
All right. Thank you both very much for this very much. Appreciate it.
And we will be right back.
What are people
saying on social media about our state's debate over drug possession laws?
One person writes SB5536
and 5647 Incentivize treatment, but give us tools to help
keep public spaces from being open air drug markets.
Another person says Leftists claim crime rates are down.
That's because we no longer arrest for drug possession.
We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact at Seattle Channel dot org
or find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Coming up next
time, doubling down on recycling in Washington state.
Lawmakers are considering the Washington recycling and Packaging or Wrap Act,
which would impose a ten cent bottle deposit like the one in Oregon,
plus make producers of packaging materials
responsible for the cost of recycling them.
How will this work?
We're taking a deep dove into the dumpster on the next city inside out.
I hope you join us.