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Anybody who has frolicked in downtown Seattle over the previous couple of years has come throughout folks overtly injecting, smoking or in any other case loading up on onerous medicine proper on the sidewalk. Nearly everybody agrees this isn’t factor, however it’s onerous to search out settlement about easy methods to cope with the issue.
Do we’d like more durable legal guidelines that will pressure road drug customers to choose between jail time and remedy? Can we eradicate all authorized penalties for possession of those killer substances and depend on packages to coax the drug stricken into rehabilitation packages? Or will we strive one thing in between, a compromise mix of carrots and sticks?
That’s precisely the difficulty the state Home of Representatives did not resolve earlier than this 12 months’s legislative session ended. A compromise plan that will have made possession of onerous medicine a gross misdemeanor didn’t get sufficient votes to cross. Opposition got here from each side of the difficulty: onerous line Republicans who demanded more durable authorized penalties and progressive Democrats who wished no penalties in any respect.
Motion was obligatory as a result of, two years in the past, the Washington State Supreme Courtroom struck down the state’s prohibition in opposition to possession of a managed substance, which was then thought of a felony. A subsequent stopgap legislation making drug possession a misdemeanor to be enforced on the third violation is ready to run out in July. Which means, if state lawmakers do nothing additional, drug possession will quickly be authorized all through the state.
That may be a win for the no penalties aspect, besides native governments is not going to stand by and do nothing. Municipal authorities across the state will give you their very own legal guidelines, which is able to invariably vary from powerful to delicate. Earlier than that occurs, although, it seems Gov. Jay Inslee will call the Legislature back into session to take another shot at passing a uniform legal standard for the state.
With no consensus on the difficulty, compromise is the one strategy to go; an imperfect legislative response to a disturbing social illness that won’t be simply healed by any scheme, irrespective of how powerful or humane.
See extra of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View different syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
Editor’s observe: Seattle Instances Opinion not appends remark threads on David Horsey’s cartoons. Too many feedback violated our community policies and reviewing the handfuls that had been flagged as inappropriate required an excessive amount of of our restricted employees time. You possibly can remark by way of a Letter to the Editor. Please electronic mail us at letters@seattletimes.com and embody your full identify, handle and phone quantity for verification solely. Letters are restricted to 200 phrases.
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