A file photo of the Washington state Capitol in Olympia.
Austin Jenkins / Northwest News Network
Leaders in cities all around Washington state are considering new bans on illegal drug possession or using such drugs in public. State lawmakers had enacted a temporary law after a 2021 Washington Supreme Court decision known as State v. Blake struck down the state’s previous drug possession laws. Efforts to pass a new permanent drug law in the final hours of the 2023 legislative session failed. On Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee is convening a special session of the state Legislature to pass a new drug law. We learn more from OPB’s Olympia correspondent Jeanie Lindsay.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Washington lawmakers are being called back to Olympia just three weeks after their 2023 session adjourned. Governor Jay Inslee announced a special session which starts tomorrow. Lawmakers are going to focus on drug possession. This follows a Washington Supreme Court decision that struck down the state’s previous drug laws. A temporary law is set to expire on July 1st. Jeanie Lindsay is OPB’s Olympia Correspondent. She joins us now with more. Welcome to the show.
Jeanie Lindsay: Hello.
Miller: Hello. So as I mentioned briefly there, the background of this is a State Supreme Court ruling that’s two years old now. What did justices say in this Blake decision?
Lindsay: So the court was looking at the case of Shannon Blake where police arrested her and then they found a small bag of meth in the coin pocket of her jeans which she said she didn’t know was there after getting the pants from a friend who bought them secondhand. Ultimately, the Supreme Court struck down the state’s felony drug possession statute as unconstitutional because it didn’t require any proof that someone who had drugs on them knew about it or intended to use them, which the majority of the court said violated a person’s right to due process under the constitution. That ruling was rather unexpected, coming down as a surprise in the middle of the legislative session that year.
Miller: And then lawmakers enacted a temporary law. What did it do?
Lindsay: Yes, lawmakers passed a temporary law that made ‘knowing possession’ a simple misdemeanor which is punishable by 90 days in jail or a $1,000 fine, or both. But there was also a sort of three strikes approach built into it, which meant that people arrested for possession had to be referred to treatment twice before they could be sent to jail.
Miller: But that temporary law, as I noted, expires in a month and a half, on July 1st. What happens at that point if lawmakers don’t act?
Lindsay: Well, it would be up to local cities and county governments to decide. Which would mean a patchwork of local ordinances and policies across the state. Some have already put some time into that as a way to put the pressure on lawmakers to pass a deal. Republicans in Washington have said that local governments having the authority to create their own rules is better than the legislature passing what they saw as an unworkable fix. But there’s broad agreement that there needs to be a state level fix to avoid that patchwork scenario. Which is why they’re coming back tomorrow and have been spending time to find a compromise that enough lawmakers are willing to get on board with.
Miller: So before we get to this special session that starts tomorrow, let’s talk about the most recent regularly scheduled session. What were the basic parameters of a bill that lawmakers were working on up until the last day of the regular session?
Lindsay: This was a big bill that took many different forms throughout the session. But at the core of it were provisions focused on deferring people from the legal system and into treatment and recovery in addition to strengthening some of the legal penalties. The crux of the disagreement is where the right balance of that is. So lawmakers included things like making drug possession a gross misdemeanor which is a step up from a simple misdemeanor and also making public drug use a crime. They also included provisions to create a pretrial diversion program, expand resources for treatment and recovery in rural areas, and allocating millions of dollars towards current programs for drug treatment and recovery and other diversion programs. They also worked to include sections that would ensure people have access to treatment hubs and resources across Washington so that those resources aren’t centralized in just one area of the state.
Miller: Oregon voters, as our listeners are well aware at this point, decriminalized all drugs a few years ago with Measure 110 and there’s been some frustration on the part of some Oregonians who thought that the measure would lead more directly or maybe more immediately to drug treatment. But just to be clear, Washington lawmakers are not working on a full decriminalization bill, right?
Lindsay: Right. There have been concerns among lawmakers here that an attempt to decriminalize would just not be effective because of a lack of treatment infrastructure to really support that. One of the arguments that I’ve heard is that without legal penalties, people who are using or addicted to drugs will stay on the streets and won’t be able, or really motivated, to get help, especially because there just isn’t enough capacity for treatment and recovery services for everyone who needs it in Washington yet. But building up treatment, resources, and recovery services are another critical aspect of this legislation with the different policies and funding that lawmakers have said they want to include in it.
Miller: As you know, this was a subject of a lot of debate and wrangling for months. If I recall, there was even an announcement the day before the session ended that there was some kind of agreement or compromise and then it failed and the session ended. What happened?
Lindsay: Yeah, there was a conference committee that passed a compromise bill and Democrats thought that the final version of the bill had enough votes after it was approved by that committee. The Republicans on that committee voted against it. But previous versions of this bill that had made it to the floor in both chambers had passed with enough Republicans on board that Democrats thought they had things all set with this compromise. But the final version didn’t convince enough, actually any, Republicans nor the progressive Democrats in the House. So it fell 12 votes short – something that surprised Democratic leadership in the legislature and the governor.
Miller: What were the big sticking points?
Lindsay: Well, for progressive Democrats, their main issue was that the bill didn’t move enough toward decriminalization -- focusing solely on treatment and recovery. They say that people shouldn’t be punished or stigmatized for a public health crisis.
Meanwhile, Republican leadership described four key points they were unhappy with on the final version after it failed: including one part of the regular session bill that would have pre-empted local ordinances on drug paraphernalia and the length of time someone has to be in treatment or recovery services before they can get their conviction dropped. Republicans wanted that to be 12 months and the final version said six months. There was also some concern about the enforceability of the drug possession and public use language in the bill. And another part of it that had to do with prosecutors signing off on diversion.
Miller: You mentioned local preemption as one of the Republican concerns. How many cities or localities right now in Washington are in the process of coming up with their own drug laws?
Lindsay: I don’t have a full number but there are several that are in the midst of doing this or have already passed some ordinances. We’ve seen Spokane, Seattle, Everett, and Snohomish County either propose or already pass their own ordinances. Some started to do this before the legislative session because they didn’t think the state’s current temporary law was really sufficient. Law enforcement and some local officials called the temporary law unworkable because there’s no way to track those referrals between cities. Like I was saying, those two strikes before someone could be sent to jail.
Amy Radil at KUOW has covered a lot of the local response to this and she was told by the Chief of Police in Auburn, Washington that cops were giving out business cards with services on them but that it wasn’t really effectively getting people into treatment. So there’s been a lot of movement on this at the local level even before session. And now as a way to really put the pressure on the state to get a state level fix accomplished.
Miller: So you’re talking about issues from both the left and from the right that ended up dooming the bill in the regular session. How much has actually changed in terms of negotiations since the end of the session?
Lindsay: The urgency on this really has been talked about since the Blake Bill failed on the final day of the regular session with the governor saying that it’s unacceptable that the state legislature didn’t do something. So leaders and lawmakers who have been working on this legislation have been meeting for the past couple of weeks. I heard this morning that there is a verbal agreement between the lawmakers who have been dealing with this bill directly. That’s still very much subject to change though. They have a deal that they think is workable right now. But the four corners, the caucuses, are going to be briefed on that final agreement or on the proposed agreement this afternoon to see where folks stand and whether it will have the support to pass.
Miller: Normally governors don’t call for special sessions unless they know that the votes are in line for their priority, for the reason they called for the session. Do you get the sense that that’s the case?
Lindsay: Yeah, Inslee said that he didn’t want to call a special session until there was a sense that a deal could be struck and he had meetings with the four caucus leaders before calling the special session. So despite the details still needing to be worked out, it seems like there’s been broad agreement that lawmakers really need to get this done.
Right now, they’re sort of finalizing the final proposed deals, the proposed final details of this, but there has been agreement since the bill’s failure on the last day of regular session that they need to get something done and we’ll see how quickly they can do that.
Miller: What’s the expectation for how long this session might last?
Lindsay: A lot of lawmakers are hoping it can wrap up in one day. It’s not entirely clear how that will play out. It really depends on how the caucuses receive this verbally agreed upon compromise deal that they are sort of proposing right now. So there’s definitely a sense of urgency to get this done as quickly as possible. They could wrap it up in one day, but certainly, I don’t get the sense that this is gonna take the full 30 days of the special session.
Miller: Will this session be exclusively focused on a new drug law or could there be other business as well?
Lindsay: This is going to exclusively focus on the Blake Bill. I haven’t heard of any other business that lawmakers are gonna want to get to during the regular session. They just had to pass the budget and they were able to do that. So this is sort of the final piece on their agenda for this year.
Miller: Jeanie Lindsay, thanks very much.
Lindsay: Thank you.
Miller: Jeanie Lindsay is OPB’s Olympia correspondent.
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