A Seattle City Council committee Tuesday morning will debate Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal for cracking down on public drug use while doing more to “emphasize diversion and health programs.”
The Public Safety and Human Services Committee session will take up and possibly vote on the proposed legislation raised in August after the Seattle City Council did not support an earlier proposal that officials said lacked adequate plans and resources to provide support for treating addiction and providing options beyond incarceration.
The Harrell administration proposal would shuffle $27 million in budgeted spending toward enhanced treatment facilities, new addiction services, and improved overdose response for first responders including $7 million this year in capital investments in facilities to provide services such as post-overdose care, opioid medication delivery, health hub services, long-term care management, and drop-in support.
The administration says it will use funding from opioid lawsuit settlements “resulting from the City’s efforts to hold large pharmaceutical companies accountable” to dedicate $20 million toward “a long-term multi-year strategy and plan to increase treatment and overdose response services” and “access to mobile opioid medication delivery, and harm reduction services.”
The funding would also boost the Seattle Fire Department’s new “post overdose response team.”
Groups like the Downtown Seattle Association and the Seattle Police Officers Guild union strongly criticized officials for being slow to respond to new state law making low level drug crimes in Washington a gross misdemeanor and giving the state a harder stance on drug law penalties.
“Like the previous bill, this updated version would incorporate those parts of the new statewide law into the City’s municipal code, allowing the City Attorney’s Office to prosecute those cases,” a briefing from the council reads. “Unlike the last bill, this one includes policies about arrests – like whether to arrest someone if they pose a threat to others vs posing a threat to themselves – and includes additional funding for treatment and services.”
The effort comes amid continued efforts for the city to address its ongoing crises of homelessness and street disorder and under the growing impact of increasing addiction and overdoses due to the wide availability of relatively cheap and powerful drugs like fentanyl.
Around 100 people a month have died of drug overdoses or alcohol poisoning in King County in 2023, totals officials say continue to rise.
Tuesday’s session is expected to include debate over a slate of proposed amendments to the mayor’s bill. You can read a council staff memo on the legislation here (PDF). A roster of the proposed amendments can be found here.
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Ah yes. Continue to debate while 100 people and rising die monthly. And water down and complicate any enforcement provisions while doing so. Public safety and Human services committee seems inaptly named.
I like the crackdown part. Clear public spaces and maintain a functioning public realm like any other city or culture anywhere in the world. Failed “harm reduction” ideology and decriminalization is the root cause of the crisis that has lead to so many needless overdose deaths and ruined the quality of life in Seattle and other west coast cities. Vote out the “progressive” clowns like Andrew Lewis and Tammy Morales that blocked Seattle from implementing state law. We are a magnet for drug addicts because of this kind of stupidity.
Couldn’t agree more with the failure of harm-reduction policies, but I think you could cool it on the slandery characterizations of these policies. “Stupidity” is a pretty unnecessary slash. It was a good attempt, just failed to incorporate some aspects of human behavior. The failure isn’t jackass foolishness, it’s shortsidedness. No need to shame. Let’s just move forward with the data we’ve collected. So, people will not regulate themselves – let’s help them.
Shame is an important part of this. Our elected leaders that dug this hole and centered our society around drug addicts should be ashamed. The people that continue to vote them in and believe the “harm reduction” bs about “evidence based” treatment should be ashamed of their naivety and inability to grasp that skyrocketing overdose deaths and the most encampments per capita in the country is pretty strong evidence that we are on the wrong track with our “harm reduction”approach. Lastly, the drug addicts also be ashamed that they are taking up so much space destroying themselves and the community. Fentanyl and meth should have a stigma because the impact on society including associated crime and violence is so great and sometimes people need to be forced into treatment not given a “safe injection” toolkit and a tent to live in the park.
. “Unlike the last bill, this one includes policies about arrests – like whether to arrest someone if they pose a threat to others vs posing a threat to themselves….”
The majority of the addicts on our streets do no pose a threat to others, so if they are excluded from arrest/prosecution/diversion then there will be no significant change to the status quo, and therefore no intervention for most who are unable to help themselves.
By the way, doesn’t state law trump city law? So, how can Seattle get away with passing a law which does not align with state law?
Since the current City Council is so leftist, why not wait on this proposed legislation to after we (hopefully) have a more moderate Council this November?
Awful. More rights taken away..