Senate Bill 109 seeks higher penalties for drug dealers
Sens. Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, and Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton, won approval from a Senate committee last week for a measure that will impose higher penalties for those who deal in Schedule I or II drugs that result in death.
The bill mirrors the penalties included in last year’s fentanyl bill to include heroin, LSD, marijuana, met, Ecstasy, Quaaludes, peyote, Vicodin, cocaine, methadone, Dilaudid, Demerol, OxyContin, Adderall and Ritalin.
Senate Bill 109, passed on a 3-2 bipartisan vote, with Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Eagle, an assistant district attorney in Eagle County, voting with the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill now heads to the full Senate.
Witnesses testified about the horrors of drug abuse, including in northeastern Colorado, and that the penalties for drug dealing are not high enough.
Terry Hofmeister, a Phillips County commissioner, told the committee about his niece, who overdosed last November. He doesn’t know if the dealer that gave her the drugs that cost her her life will ever be caught.
“She fought demons for several years,” but had gotten clean, even helping with Narcan distribution in Phillips County. “Everything was good.”
But once you have that demon, it’s hard to fight, he added, and she lost her life.
“The penalty for drug dealers could never be harsh enough for me,” Hofmeister said, asking the committee to hold drug dealers accountable to the maximum of what they can be charged and more than just a slap on the wrist. “They make a lot of money, can hire the best lawyers and then walk away. That’s unacceptable to me.”
Consequences for fatalities
In Logan County, six times a parent has died because someone dealt drugs, and that means kids who have lost a parent, according to Dave Long, the director of Human Services. The last two deaths were due to fentanyl and those kids wound up on the streets, although eventually ending up in residential care.
Mullica, who is a registered nurse who works in the emergency room at a Denver area hospital, said that his community has been clear: If someone comes into the community and deals in drugs that kill someone, there should be a significant consequence.
That doesn’t mean resources shouldn’t be devoted to mental health, harm reduction or addiction treatment, nor does it mean that someone shouldn’t get treatment for an addiction.
“They do not want us to throw our hands in the air and do nothing,” he said.
Pelton said his district is dealing with a significant meth problem and is trying to find resources to provide treatment. “We’ve dealt with it in different ways,” he said, including getting more resources to northeastern Colorado, including treatment.
“However, there must be consequences when somebody dies,” he said, especially when it comes to criminal behavior.
District attorneys testified that they’re finding that overdoses are caused by a mix of drugs, and for right now, there’s one penalty for causing a death from fentanyl and a different one for other drugs. Coroners can’t tell which is the cause of death, only that it’s an overdose, and that makes it harder for district attorneys to determine what to charge. That’s a result of the 2022 legislation, they said.
District Attorney Travis Sides of the 13th Judicial District, which covers northeastern Colorado, also spoke in support of the bill and on behalf of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council.
For decades, people have been dying from meth and other substances, and while fentanyl has been highlighted, it’s only half the problem. In his district, most of the drug cases are for meth; few for fentanyl. This bill makes the law consistent: if you sell an illegal substance that causes someone’s death, it makes no sense to “split hairs” over the exact chemical component of that substance, whether it’s meth, fentanyl or something else.
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