9 California Fentanyl Bills Advance, 8 Targeting Overdose Prevention, One Increasing Penalties
SACRAMENTO—With the fentanyl crisis leading to more than 500 deaths of Californians per week, lawmakers in the California Assembly passed a series of bills on May 25 aimed at preventing overdoses through education, providing more access to opioid reversal medications, and harsher penalties for dealers caught with enough of the drug to kill 500,000 people.
Nine such bills will now be considered by the Senate in the coming weeks.
Throughout the legislative process, some Democrats have remained resistant to increasing penalties to address the crisis, with many characterizing such as a new “War on Drugs.”
Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), who also chairs the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, has led the chorus of legislators voicing the opinion that sending distributors to prison will not alleviate the problem, with repeated references to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s….