A bipartisan group of lawmakers within the California senate on Monday introduced a package deal of laws to deal with the rising fentanyl disaster and untamed outbreak of organized retail thefts.
Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), who was sworn in as president professional tempore final month, recited sobering statistics to reporters as he launched proposals he stated will treatment the problems by way of a extra rehabilitative method.
“There are greater than 12,000 drug overdose deaths a 12 months in California. Greater than half of these deaths are fentanyl-related,” McGuire stated. “Black and Latino communities have seen a 200% improve in overdose deaths since 2017. Native People had a 150% improve in overdose deaths in the identical interval. The Hoopa Valley tribe faces a fentanyl loss of life fee eight instances larger than the state common.”
The senate’s motion comes after Meeting leaders this month introduced their plans to treatment the problems, a sign that the drug and theft crises shall be priorities this legislative session — and in California’s 2024 election.
The set of 14 payments introduced by McGuire and different Democrat and Republican Senate leaders takes a sweeping method. The laws, if handed and signed by the governor, would improve entry to remedy, improve dependancy companies for these within the legal justice system and penalize legal trafficking of xylazine, or “tranq,” a horse tranquilizer laced in fentanyl.
Amongst these payments is SB 1144, authored by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), which is able to tighten rules to assist stop stolen items from being offered on-line.
Tinisch Hollins, government director of the nonprofit Californians for Security and Justice, known as the package deal a “considerate method to nuanced challenges.”
Hollins stated the package deal is required “in an atmosphere the place particular pursuits are gaslighting Californians with harmful and ineffective rollbacks.”
She was referring to regulation enforcement businesses which have lobbied for modifications to Proposition 47, a contentious poll measure that lowered sure retail theft and drug offense fees to misdemeanors.
Contra Costa County Dist. Atty. Diana Becton known as for a strategic method that strays from a one-size-fits-all method to public security.
“I’ve seen firsthand the necessity to reimagine our method to legal justice,” she stated. “To reexamine and reproach it by way of a lens of racial and socioeconomic disparity, with an eye fixed to restorative justice applications and rehabilitation applications for nonviolent offenses.”
