Tag Archives: Drugs

Muzzall fentanyl test strip bill gets unanimous vote

Opioid overdose deaths have been skyrocketing in Washington State. King County saw over 1,000 overdose deaths last year and 70% of the victims had fentanyl in their system. While legislators recently approved a measure to deal with drug possession and treatment, legislation sponsored by Sen. Ron Muzzall to help reduce immediate harm received unanimous approval in the state Senate today.

Senate Bill 5022 would remove fentanyl testing strips from the list of illegal drug paraphernalia. Many jurisdictions around the state are already distributing these test strips but are doing so illegally.

“It no secret that communities around our state are being deeply affected by the opioid epidemic. While we have some work to do to get at the root causes, we can at least deal with the effects by providing life-saving interventions,” said Muzzall, R-Oak Harbor. “Like the state did with Narcan in 2020, we need to change this law so that this deadly fentanyl scourge will hopefully take fewer lives.”

In addition to delisting test strips, Muzzall’s bipartisan legislation would allow public health and community organizations to either sell or provide the test strips.

“People struggling with addiction know that they’re doing is harmful, but they likely are not intending to ingest a substance as deadly as fentanyl,” Muzzall lamented. “I don’t want people to be doing drugs in the first place, but I certainly don’t want them do die unwittingly. Removing test strips from the classification and engaging community partners will hopefully put a dent in the number of overdose deaths we are seeing.”

The House of Representatives will now take up Muzzall’s bill in the public hearing process. They must move it out of committee and vote to approve the proposal by April 12.

Muzzall says drug possession fix a ‘step toward a solution’

The state Senate worked late into the evening this past Friday, struggling over a bipartisan compromise to state drug possession laws. In 2021, the state Supreme Court handed down its Blake decision, which ruled Washington’s felony drug possession law was unconstitutional. Since the Legislature was still in session, it approved a stopgap measure during the 2021 session that was set to expire in July of this year.

Sen. Ron Muzzall, R-Oak Harbor, voted in favor of Senate Bill 5536, which was approved by a mixed vote after hours of contentious negotiations and floor debate. The proposal would create a schedule of drug possession offense levels and diversion programs, would define prosecutorial deferrals, would clarify sentencing requirements, and would allocate resources for implementation. Muzzall issued the following statement:

“We spent nearly six hours working on this Blake fix Friday night. It isn’t perfect, but I’m proud of the individuals who spent so much time over the past weeks working on a compromise that I feel good about voting for. This legislation gives a path for people struggling with addiction to get them into treatment and that is needed, but it also balances the need for consequences and accountability, which has been sorely lacking since 2021.

“While there was a great deal of discussion on the Senate floor that characterized the drug offenders as victims, there was really no mention of the people, businesses and communities that were being victimized. Some seemed content to gloss over the rise in theft, broken storefronts, vandalism and proliferation of encampments along our roadways. The people I represent deserve a solution to this problem that only seems to be getting worse. Hopefully, this legislation is a step toward a real solution.”