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 a extra rehabilitative strategy.
“There are greater than 12,000 drug overdose deaths a yr 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 Individuals had a 150% improve in overdose deaths in the identical interval. The Hoopa Valley tribe faces a fentanyl loss of life fee eight occasions 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 might 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 strategy. The laws, if handed and signed by the governor, would improve entry to therapy, 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 bought on-line.
Tinisch Hollins, government director of the nonprofit Californians for Security and Justice, referred to as the package deal a “considerate strategy to nuanced challenges.”
Hollins stated the package deal is required “in an setting the place particular pursuits are gaslighting Californians with harmful and ineffective rollbacks.”
She was referring to legislation enforcement companies which have lobbied for changes 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 referred to as for a strategic strategy that strays from a one-size-fits-all strategy to public security.
“I’ve seen firsthand the necessity to reimagine our strategy to legal justice,” she stated. “To reexamine and reproach it by a lens of racial and socioeconomic disparity, with an eye fixed to restorative justice applications and rehabilitation applications for nonviolent offenses.”
Source link
