Fentanyl crackdown will make things worse for women | Opinion

When women are not involved in the solution, we will always pay the price. The fentanyl and overdose public health crisis is alarming, and it’s past time that Colorado lawmakers invest in evidence-based solutions. These solutions must account for the ways women, specifically BIPOC women and their children, are affected by failed drug war policies and biases in access to substance use treatment.

The clamor to increase penalties for simple possession of fentanyl from a misdemeanor to a felony in HB22-1326 comes largely from law enforcement who argue that they need the felony “hammer” to force people into treatment and that they can’t arrest people for drug possession because it’s “only” a misdemeanor. Both claims don’t add up to what experts in the field are seeing and both claims are dangerous for women.

Rather, re-felonizing simple possession of drugs perpetuates a dominance-by-force culture by claiming that arresting women who are struggling with addiction and putting them in a cage is somehow a way to “help” them. People must understand that the path to addiction for women is almost always severe histories of trauma, sexual assault, and violent victimization, often repeat victimization. Using a “hammer” against these women and locking them up is not the answer.

Law enforcement officers are not specialists in addiction or recovery. Building humane and equitable pathways to recovery for women should include harm reduction and public health experts. Evidence shows us that felonizing women is misinformed and we mustn’t give credence to such policy suggestions.

It’s only been since March 2020, that simple drug possession has been a misdemeanor in an attempt to recalibrate the focus on prevention, diversion and treatment, and less on punishment and incarceration. There has been no tie between felony drug possession laws and a decrease in drug offenses, fewer overdose deaths, and felony possession laws did nothing to get fentanyl off the streets and out of our communities.

And we’ve been down this road before. A look back might be instructive.

Only 4% of the world’s female population lives in the U.S., but the U.S. accounts for nearly 30% of the world’s incarcerated women, with Colorado’s female incarceration rate above the national average.

Women in the U.S. have seen an 800% increase in incarceration over the past few decades. The rise in rates of incarcerated women is said to be the result of more expansive law enforcement efforts, stiff drug sentencing laws, and post-conviction barriers. More than one in four of these women are incarcerated on drug convictions. Furthermore, Black women are 1.7 times and Latinx women are 1.3 times more likely to be incarcerated than white women. 

To make matters worse, we know that Black women in Colorado do not have positive outcomes with diversion and treatment programs. The reason being, they aren’t connected to them in the first place. For example, Black women make up 27% of the Denver County jail population, yet they only account for 7% of diversion referrals and just 6% of admissions. Black women know intimately what felonzing means for them and their families — a lifetime of barriers to economic security, stable housing, education, and health.

Lastly, more than half of incarcerated women in the U.S. are mothers and that does not include the number of women who will give birth while incarcerated. Children with an incarcerated parent suffer lasting effects on their well-being with an increased risk of psychological and behavioral problems, insufficient sleep and poor nutrition, unstable homes, and higher odds of entering the criminal justice system themselves.

The amended version of the bill will felonize simple possession of more than 1 gram for people addicted to fentanyl and any other drug with trace amounts of fentanyl present. While the bill retains the misdemeanor, it does so at a much lower quantity. The decision to lower the quantity wasn’t based on evidence or research, but the fear around fentanyl. As bad as this is, we implore the legislature not to make matters even worse by going down to 0 grams.

A felony should never be the ticket to treatment and diversion opportunities. There is still time to make this bill better.

As women and subject matter experts, we are pleading with our state leaders to remember the women who will be negatively impacted and whose lives will be made worse if we don’t first and foremost address substance use addiction with on-demand treatment, recovery supports, and compassion. BIPOC women deserve equal access to quality prevention, treatment, and recovery programs. And children deserve to not be torn away from their mothers.

Christie Donner is executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. Lisa Calderón is a board member of the Colorado Latino Forum.