Washington State Government Panel Urges ‘Safe Supply’ Model To Reduce Drug Overdose Deaths

A Washington State government working group is renewing its call for
officials to take steps toward ensuring “a regulated, tested supply of
controlled substances to individuals at risk of drug overdoses,” pointing
to a number of policy options developed in recent years.

Members said in a report that the goals of the safe supply reform are to
ensure substances are as safe as possible to consume and to minimize
peripheral harms from drug criminalization and incarceration. Changes would
also aim to reduce theft, petty crime and syringe litter often associated
with illicit drug activity.

The work group presented its safe supply recommendations at a meeting last
month, according to The Center Square, but the proposal itself is not new.
The state Substance Use Recovery Services Advisory Committee (SURSAC),
created through a 2021 law, recommended the following year that lawmakers
decriminalize the possession of controlled substances, and the body “has
expressed broad support to establish a system to provide safe supply
services,” the recommendation report notes.

Four different safe supply frameworks were recommended at 2022 SURSAC
special meeting, including prescription and supervised consumption,
prescription and self-administration, a dispensary model and a
community-based “buyer’s club.”
[image: Table 1. Characteristics of different safe supply frameworks under
consideration.]

SURSAC / Washington State Health Care Authority

Republican lawmaker Rep. Travis Couture told The Center Square that he
opposes the state taking a role in the safe supply effort, adding that
SURSAC seems uninterested in considering other approaches.

“They only want to double down on the failures,” he said, “and what we’re
talking about here is taxpayer-funded drug dealing, where the state would
hand out heroin, fentanyl and meth on our dime.”

“That’s not treatment,” Couture added, “that’s surrender.”

SURSAC, for its part, wants to see a clinical trial by researchers and a
safe supply pilot program enacted by lawmakers.

A subset of Democratic lawmakers did briefly consider the decriminalization
of simple drug possession following a 2021 state Supreme Court ruling that
struck down Washington’s possession law as unconstitutional. Instead, the
legislature chose to recriminalize possession as a lesser charge. And in
years since, lawmakers have been more hesitant to advance sweeping reforms
such as decriminalization.

As of earlier this year, officials across the state were also still making
uneven progress on requirements to vacate thousands of past criminal
convictions following the Supreme Court ruling.

In May, a cut to a state budget bill eliminated about $5 million to support
legal aid groups working on the clearance effort.

“It’s a gut punch,” Camerina Zorrozua, the legal director and co-founder of
The Way to Justice, a nonprofit legal aid organization based in Spokane
that has relied on the funding since 2021, told InvestigateWest at the
time. “The rug was just pulled out from under us.”

Earlier this year, state Democrats once again also gave up on a plan that
would have legalized home cultivation of marijuana for personal use, opting
instead to keep the conduct classified as a felony.


*— Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug
policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon
supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps,
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If enacted law, HB 1449, from Rep. Shelley Kloba, would have allowed adults
21 and older to grow up to six cannabis plants at home for personal use,
with households capped at 15 plants regardless of how many adults reside on
the premises. People could also lawfully keep the marijuana produced by
those plants despite the state’s existing one-ounce limit on possession.

Kloba and other supportive lawmakers have worked for nearly a decade to
pass a law allowing adults to grow a small number of cannabis plants for
their own use, but each year, other lawmakers and executive agencies have
stood in the way of the proposal.

*Image courtesy of Dima Solomin.*

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Reduce Drug Overdose Deaths appeared first on Marijuana Moment.