Drug-induced homicide laws heap harm upon tragedy. NO on SB109.

Evidence shows¹ drug-induced homicide (DIH) laws like SB23-109 do not prevent overdose deaths, deter drug use, or help law enforcement focus on high-level drug dealers. They do target and punish people with substance use disorders who, like the person who died of overdose, need and deserve help and connection to care. Learn more.

Senate Bill 23-109 would make it a Class 1 Drug Felony, punishable by up to 32 years in prison, to sell or share any controlled substance that results in a fatal overdose.

⚡️ ACT NOW ⚡️ Tell legislators Colorado needs evidence-based solutions to the drug crisis, not more of the same failed carceral policies like SB109.

SB23-109 is an unusually broad and particularly dangerous version of an already-failed approach.

Making it a felony to even share drugs with a person who dies of an overdose would result in locking up family and friends of the person who has died, compounding the tragedy.

20 states have drug-induced homicide laws. They don’t work.

So-called “drug-induced homicide” laws like SB23-109 have long existed under federal law and in twenty states. They have a long track record of failure and unintended consequences.

SB109 will NOT:

✘ Deter drug sales or use.

✘ Prevent overdose deaths.

✘ Help law enforcement disrupt drug supply.

SB109 WILL:

✔ Criminalize people who need and deserve help.

✔ Harm families & communities.

✔ Discourage people witnessing an overdose from calling 911.

Learn more about SB23-109 or take action below.

¹Source: bit.ly/DPA_DIH

☎️

Call your Legislators

Tell Colorado House Judiciary Members NO on SB23-109. (Sample scripts are below).

Rep Mike Weissman (Chair)   303-866-2942

Rep Jennifer Bacon (Vice Chair) 303-866-2909

Rep Lindsey Daugherty 303-866-2950

Rep Bob Marshall 303-866-2936

Rep Marc Snyder 303-866-2932

Rep Said Sharbini 303-866-2918

Rep Steven Woodrow 303-866-2967

Rep Lorena Garcia   303-866-2964

Rep Elisabeth Epps 303-866-2911

Sample scripts:

My name is [FULL NAME] and I am calling in regards to SB23-109.

Option 1: Drug Induced Homicide Laws Don’t Work

I urge you to vote NO on SB109. This bill is based on 20 years of failed drug-induced homicide legislation. Overdose deaths are a tragedy, not a murder. There is no evidence that drug-induced homicide laws work to reduce drug use, lessen overdose deaths, or decrease the supply of illegal drugs. SB109 is a regressive policy that will cost more lives, at great cost to taxpayers.

Option 2: Criminal Punishment Compounds the Tragedy

Please vote no on SB109. This bill would make it a Class 1 Drug Felony, punishable by up to 32 years in prison, to sell or share any illegal drug that results in a fatal overdose. The most likely person to die of an overdose is a person with a substance use disorder. The most likely person to be punished under this law is a friend who also has a substance use disorder. Both people need and deserve help. Neither receive help under this bill, it only compounds the tragedy. We can do better.

Option 3: Felonization is failed policy

Please oppose SB109. Overdose deaths are an urgent public health crisis that demand immediate action by policy makers at every level of government in order to save lives. But more felonization is not the way. The person who provides drugs to someone who overdoses is 100% more likely to be a friend than a high-level dealer. Law enforcement should be focused on high-level dealers. Criminalization and incarceration are inherently destabilizing and stigmatizing, and as such, will only cause more harm to our communities. Coloradans need and deserve an evidence-based public health approach to the overdose crisis. 

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Email your Legislators

Custom messages get more attention from legislators, so we’ve created a “choose your own adventure” email template for you. Thank you for sending this crucial message!

TO:

Your Colorado State Representative FIND THEM HERE

BCC: Colorado House (It’s a lot, we know!):

judy.amabile.house@coleg.gov, ryan.armagost.house@coleg.gov, jennifer.bacon.house@coleg.gov, shannon.bird.house@coleg.gov, rod.bockenfeld.house@coleg.gov, andrew.boesenecker.house@coleg.gov, scott.bottoms.house@coleg.gov, mary.bradfield.house@coleg.gov, brandi.bradley.house@coleg.gov, marc.catlin.house@coleg.gov, lindsey.daugherty.house@coleg.gov, ken.degraaf.house@coleg.gov, chris.kennedy.house@coleg.gov, Ruby.Dickson.house@coleg.gov, monica.duran.house@coleg.gov, regina.english.house@coleg.gov, elisabeth.epps.house@coleg.gov, gabe.evans.house@coleg.gov, lisa.frizell.house@coleg.gov, meg.froelich.house@coleg.gov, lorena.garcia.house@coleg.gov, serena.gonzales-gutierrez.house@coleg.gov, eliza.hamrick.house@coleg.gov, anthony.hartsook.house@coleg.gov, leslie.herod.house@coleg.gov, richard.holtorf.house@coleg.gov, Iman.Jodeh.house@coleg.gov, junie.joseph.house@coleg.gov, cathy.kipp.house@coleg.gov, sheila.lieder.house@coleg.gov, mandy.lindsay.house@coleg.gov, william.lindstedt.house@coleg.gov, stephanie.luck.house@coleg.gov, meghan.lukens.house@coleg.gov, mike.lynch.house@coleg.gov, javier.mabrey.house@coleg.gov, bob.marshall.house@coleg.gov, matthew.martinez.house@coleg.gov, tisha.mauro.house@coleg.gov, Julie.Mccluskie.house@coleg.gov, karen.mccormick.house@coleg.gov, barbara.mclachlan.house@coleg.gov, dafna.michaelson.jenet.house@coleg.gov, David.Ortiz.house@coleg.gov, jennifer.parenti.house@coleg.gov, rose.pugliese.house@coleg.gov, Naquetta.Ricks.house@coleg.gov, said.sharbini.house@coleg.gov, emily.sirota.house@coleg.gov, marc.snyder.house@coleg.gov, matthew.soper.house@coleg.gov, tammy.story.house@coleg.gov, rick.taggart.house@coleg.gov, brianna.titone.house@coleg.gov, alex.valdez.house@coleg.gov, elizabeth.velasco.house@coleg.gov, stephanie.vigil.house@coleg.gov, ron.weinberg.house@coleg.gov, mike.weissman.house@coleg.gov, jenny.willford.house@coleg.gov, don.wilson.house@coleg.gov, ty.winter.house@coleg.gov, steven.woodrow.house@coleg.gov, mary.young.house@coleg.gov

*Subject Line* (Choose one or write your own)

  • NO on SB109. People who use drugs need help, not more punishment

  • SB23-109 will increase deaths from overdose. Vote No.

  • Drug-induced homicide laws are failed policy. Vote NO on SB109.

  • Overly-broad, useless and cruel: SB23-109 is wrong for Colorado.

  • Vengeance isn’t justice. Punishment isn’t the answer. No on SB23-109. 

  • Vote No on Senate Bill 23-109

BODY:

*Introduction* (Choose one or write your own)

My name is [your name] and I live in [your city/zip code].

  • I am writing to ask you to please oppose legislation this year that will increase deaths due to overdose – SB23-109, Criminal Penalty Controlled Substance Supplier. 

  • Drug induced homicide laws like SB23-109 are a failed policy that do the opposite of what they are intended to do. SB23-109 will harm Coloradans while doing nothing to solve the drug crisis, and more people will be left to die alone in the event of an overdose.

  • If two people are sharing drugs and one of them dies, that’s not murder – it’s a tragedy. And punishing the person who lives isn’t justice – it’s cruelty. SB23-109 compounds tragedy with cruelty, and will only serve to perpetuate harm by criminalizing people who need help. And it will discourage people from calling 911 during an overdose.

  • Are we trying to reduce overdose deaths? Punish drug dealers? SB23-109 does neither. But it will make sure people witnessing an overdose event won’t call 911. Most overdoses are witnessed. Reducing barriers to calling 911 saves lives. This bill will cause more people to die.

  • The most likely person to die of an overdose is someone with a serious substance abuse problem. And the most likely person to be criminalized under SB23-109 is also someone with a serious substance abuse problem. This is the wrong solution for Colorado.

*Make a Second Point (Choose one or write your own)

  • Drug induced homicide laws only serve to further harm the most vulnerable among us. But this dangerously expanded version – where not only people who sell drugs, but people who share drugs would be harshly criminalized – will subvert Colorado’s Good Samaritan protections and result in people overdosing being abandoned and left to die alone. 

  • Drug induced homicide laws are outdated, disproven, and completely wrongheaded. While this bill purports to target “kingpin” drug dealers and deter drug trafficking, evidence from other states with these laws and from years of drug wars waged against American communities shows it will only serve to lock up family members, and friends – who often struggle with substance use themselves – while the kingpin drug dealers and cartels remain free to target their next victim and profit from tragedy. 

  • Evidence shows that increasing the severity of a potential sentence is ineffective at preventing crime. There is no relationship between state drug imprisonment rates and overdose deaths, and substance use continues to increase despite an increase in drug sentences.

  • Colorado’s drug treatment infrastructure does not meet the present demand for services. People wait on average 2 weeks to 2 months to get into care because our state lacks capacity in treatment facilities and enough professional staff to meet the need. We should be spending our tax dollars on expanding treatment access, not prison beds.

*Make an Ask* (Choose one or write your own)

  • Please reject SB23-109. We need public health solutions to combat the overdose crisis. SB23-109 compounds tragedy with more pain – for people suffering from substance use, for their families, and for our communities. 

  • Every overdose death in Colorado — an average of 5 deaths per day and rising — is a policy choice.  We need to stop making the same bad choices, and start doing what’s been proven to keep people alive. I hope you will vote NO on SB23-109.

  • Please vote no on SB109. If your child were overdosing, you would want whoever was with them to call 911 immediately, not worry that they were going to prison and leave the scene. Our laws can either create the conditions where people call 911, or create the conditions where they will not. This law all but guarantees the latter.

  • I ask you to vote no on SB23-109. Overdose deaths continue to rise exponentially despite our intensely carceral approach. If we’re going to prevent our friends, family and neighbors from dying needlessly of drug overdose, Colorado must make a break from the past and implement public health based programs that are proven to work. 

*Be sure to add a note of thanks*

  • Thank you!

  • I appreciate your kind consideration.

  • Thanks for your attention.

    Sincerely,
    [YOUR NAME]

Background on SB23-109

Despite outcry from Colorado’s most respected public health, behavioral health, and addiction experts, Senate leaders are backing a regressive bipartisan bill, SB23-109, that takes an outdated and often-failed approach to addressing the drug crisis in our state—an approach favored by law enforcement that centers harsher punishment and increased incarceration.

SB23-109 is an unusually broad and particularly dangerous version of an already-failed approach. By making it a felony to not just sell, but even to share drugs with a person who overdoses in the context of a wildly-toxic street drug market would result in locking up family and friends of the person who has died of overdose, compounding the tragedy. 

“Under pressure to respond to America’s overdose crisis, prosecutors and policymakers are increasingly treating accidental overdose deaths as homicides. The number and scope of DIH laws is growing under the banner of overdose prevention. The stated aims of the laws is to target drug traffickers, ‘sending a signal’ to deter the distribution of illicit substances. 

There is no systematic empirical evidence that DIH prosecutions slow the sale of illegal drugs. On the contrary, they may well be counterproductive. Running at cross-purposes to 911 Good Samaritan laws, DIH prosecutions discourage witnesses to overdoses from calling 911 for fear that they will be arrested and charged with DIH or other serious crimes. For those who are incarcerated and have an opioid use disorder, there is an exponentially increased likelihood of death from overdose during the first weeks after release. Investment in these prosecutions and incarceration also divert resources from treatment, harm reduction, and social support services.”

— the Center for Health Policy and Law, Drug-Induced Homicide

Doubling down on failed carceral policies is not the answer.

The U.S. leads the world in both overdose deaths and incarceration rates, and that’s not a coincidence. The carceral approach has never worked, and will never work, to prevent drug use or decrease overdose deaths. Criminalizing people who use or possess drugs has no impact on supply or demand. Many other countries have implemented effective policies which focus on helping, rather than punishing, people struggling with addiction. 

The number of drug-related deaths in the U.S. is higher than the next 20 countries combined. If locking people up or punishing them more harshly made us safer, we’d be the safest country in the world. Laws that impose harsher criminal penalties for drug use only increases incarceration rates, it doesn't improve substance use outcomes.

 “The supply of illicit fentanyl cannot be permanently stopped through enforcement alone — only temporarily disrupted before another cartel, trafficking method or analogue steps in to fill the market that addiction creates. Failure to intervene in ways that appropriately reduce demand and decrease the risk of fatal overdose will almost certainly result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands more Americans and will imperil the country’s economic and social well-being.”

— Congressionally Convened Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, 2022 Report.

Colorado needs data-driven policy led by health care professionals that specialize in substance abuse to address the drug crisis.

“This is a natural reaction for society and lawmakers to say, ‘We want to put the squeeze on this,’ but you can’t arrest your way out of this problem.”

-Bryce Pardo, Director of the Drug Policy Research Center at the RAND Corporation

Colorado needs a public health roadmap to tackle unprecedented overdose deaths in our communities, not disproven criminal justice approaches centered around punishment and incarceration that will only lead to more deaths.

Lawmakers must consult public health experts, doctors, mental health providers, and other health professionals who specialize in substance abuse. Those are the professionals who are best-equipped and most knowledgeable in how to keep people safe and alive in a health emergency. We must continue to practice smart, science- and data-driven policymaking when addressing the Colorado drug crisis, not fall back on failed approaches that center punishment and incarceration.

The people most likely to die of drug overdose – people with chaotic sustained substance use issues – do not want their friends criminalized.

(Pictured: Signed DO NOT PROSECUTE Statements filed with the Harm Reduction Action Center Care, not vengeance. )

Felonization will lead to worse outcomes.

When we criminalize and incarcerate people for drug use instead of providing community-based, on-demand substance use treatment, recovery, and mental health services, the outcomes are exponentially worse.

In order to successfully recover from drug addiction, people need support and stabilization. Criminalization and incarceration are inherently destabilizing, stigmatizing, and only causes more harm. People arrested and criminalized for sharing or subsistence sales of drugs often lose access to any treatment supports or prescribed medication they may be depending on to treat their condition, as well as the benefits of a stabilizing routine, housing/shelter, and employment.

Felonization is deadly.

Incarceration can be a death sentence for people who use drugs. Drug overdose is a leading cause of death among formerly incarcerated people as they are 10 to 40 times more likely to overdose in the early days of their release. That’s because they lose their tolerance to drugs while behind bars, but they are not treated for their addiction. When they’re released, they relapse. Without tolerance, they overdose and die.

Felonization will not stop overdoses. It drives people away from seeking treatment for fear that they will be criminalized.

We should be spending our tax dollars on expanding treatment access, not prison beds.

Colorado’s drug treatment infrastructure does not meet the present demand for services. There are between 400-450 people who urgently want to get well who are waiting for residential or inpatient substance use treatment beds in the public system. People wait on average 2 weeks to 2 months to get into care because our state lacks capacity in treatment facilities and enough professional staff to meet the need.

 

Studies show that people who receive treatment when they are ready have by far the best chances for successful recovery. To reduce both drug use and overdose rates, we must start by prioritizing meeting the demand for on-demand treatment, at all access points, in a timely manner, for everyone who wants and needs it.

Felony convictions impose a particularly heavy burden on communities of color, exacerbating inequality.

People of all races use drugs at a similar rate, but Black and Brown people are far more likely to be arrested for drug offenses. People of color are more often stopped, searched, and suspected of crime.

In Colorado, Black people are twice as likely as white people to be arrested for a drug offense, and innocent Black people are 12x more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people. They also receive longer sentences for similar offenses. This contributes to significant racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system. As a result, 25% of Black people have a current or prior felony conviction (compared with just 6% of the rest of the population), and researchers estimate that one in three Black men will be convicted of felony offenses in their lifetimes. The socio-economic impacts of this disparity are extreme and far-reaching.

“…decades of data show us that while drug possession remained a felony we did not see increased access to treatment or decreased use, but we did see entire communities, particularly communities of color, devastated by mass incarceration and the collateral consequences of felonies.”

- Mental Health Colorado

Sources

¹Colorado Health Institute, Colorado Overdose Death Rate by Year, 2000-2020, CDPHE

We’re building a coalition.

We are stronger together. Let’s work together to protect our most vulnerable neighbors in Colorado from the harms of the criminal INjustice system.


Sign up to testify Monday, March 6th at Senate Judiciary.

SB23-109 is headed to the Senate Judiciary Committee and needs your voice to tell policy makers that Colorado needs evidence-based solutions to our overdose crisis, not harmful carceral bills that repeat the mistakes of the past.

Testifying is easy (yes, even for introverts!) and we’ll walk you through it. Just follow the steps below!

WRITE YOUR TESTIMONY:

You’ll get 2-3 minutes to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
It is most effective to make your testimony respectful, factual, and meaningful.

  1. Say your name and the organization you represent (if applicable).

  2. Greet the committee.

  3. State your position as “AGAINST” HB23-109

  4. State some information about the bill (see below).

  5. Add a personal story/anecdotes to demonstrate your position.

  6. Restate/review your position.

  7. Thank the committee for the opportunity to speak.

HOW TO TESTIFY:

Sign up using this form.

  1. At the bottom of the page, select how you wish to testify (We’ll be there in person!)

  2. Under Committee, select “Senate Judiciary”.

  3. Under Date and Time, select “3/6/2023 at 1:30pm.”

  4. Under Hearing Item, select “Senate Judiciary HB23-109”.

  5. Under Position, select “Against”.

  6. Hit Sign Up and you’ll receive a confirmation email.

WHAT TO DO DAY OF:

If you testify in person, arrive at the address below by 1:15 pm.
If you testify via zoom, you’ll be sent a link and instructions.

Colorado State Capitol
Room: Old Supreme Court
200 E Colfax Ave, Denver, CO 80203

Directions

FACTS TO HELP YOU WRITE YOUR TESTIMONY

Use the bullet points here to help write your testimony.