Colorado Fentanyl Felony Law Faces $68M Cost and Treatment Criticism

Fentanyl is now a felony.

That is the headline. Proposition 132 passed. The vote was clear. Coloradans wanted action. They saw the bodies. They heard the sirens. They wanted the state to do something, anything, to stop the bleeding.

But there is a second headline hiding in the fine print. It is quieter. It is uglier. It asks whether we voted for justice, or just for a warehouse.

Gov.-elect Phil Weiser knows the heat is on. He has already hinted that the legislature might need to look back at the statutory ballot measures. He should make Proposition 132 his first order of business when lawmakers walk into the Capitol in January. Do not let it sit on a shelf while the budget gets chopped up.

The measure changes the math of the courtroom. Possession of even trace amounts is now a felony. Distribution carries a mandatory sentence of eight to 32 years. The quantity does not matter. The label does.

Read that again.

Eight to 32 years. For distribution. Regardless of quantity.

This blurs the line between a dealer making a profit and a user passing a bag to a friend. In the world of addiction, that line is thin. People share drugs. They trade favors. They survive. Treating those small, desperate exchanges like high-level trafficking does not make the streets safer. It just fills the cells.

Judicial discretion is gone. A judge cannot weigh the circumstances. A judge cannot ask if the defendant knew what was in the bag. The statute decides. The judge signs.

Supporters say the hammer will bring people to treatment. Fear works. Maybe.

The National Institute of Justice says otherwise. They argue that increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. The data is old. It is solid. It is inconvenient.

And the treatment? The measure requires it for certain possession offenses. But it provides no funding to expand services. No new beds. No new counselors. No new clinics. Just a mandate.

The nonpartisan fiscal analysts did the math. The additional costs will reach $68.2 million annually by the fifth year. That money goes to criminal justice. Courts. Police. Prisons.

Imagine spending that $68.2 million elsewhere. Medications for opioid use disorder. Recovery housing. Overdose prevention. Community-based treatment.

We have evidence that those things work. A National Institutes of Health-supported study found that providing medications for opioid use disorder in jails was associated with substantially lower overdose rates. The science is there. The money is going to the cages instead.

The families who backed Proposition 132 deserve respect. They lost children. They lost spouses. Their grief is real. Their anger is justified.

But compassion for the grieving should not blind us to the policy. We know what addiction is. It is a disease. It is not a moral failing. It is not a crime, unless the state says so.

We voted for action. Good.

Now we have to decide what kind of action that was.