While Washington lawmakers prepare for a special session to pass amended drug possession laws, Cowlitz County’s law enforcement officials say they aren’t taking any chances.
Top police brass in the county plan to put ordinances before cities and the county this month that would make public drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor, punishable with jail on the first offense.
“We felt we needed to have some kind of enforcement capability,” Cowlitz County Sheriff Brad Thurman recently told OPB. “We thought we should act locally to protect our community.”
The move follows some legislative inaction in Olympia to stabilize the shifting ground of Washington’s drug laws.
Cowlitz County Sheriff Brad Thurman.
Molly Solomon / OPB
In 2021, the state Supreme Court overturned Washington’s felony drug possession statute. State lawmakers passed stopgap measures that year, but those are set to expire on July 1. Lawmakers did not pass a fix before the latest session ended.
Without a fix, local law enforcement faces a “huge impact” said Longview Police Chief Robert Hutah. Each government would have to pass its own laws – which he said Longview intends to do if lawmakers can’t pass a new law in time.
This week, Gov. Jay Inslee announced a special session will convene on May 16 to finish that work. Rep. Monica Stonier, a Vancouver Democrat and a party floor leader in Olympia said she’s confident the amended laws will pass.
“I think we can try to get this thing done in the first week of this special session,” Stonier told OPB.
According to Thurman, it’s common for law enforcement to work on drafting legal language. He said multiple police chiefs are working with city attorneys, the county and local judges. A copy of the language isn’t public yet, he said.
However, Thurman said the local ordinances would make drug possession a gross misdemeanor in Cowlitz County. That would be punishable by up to a year in jail. It would also make possession of drug paraphernalia and using illegal substances in public a gross misdemeanor.
The current, sunsetting laws are more lenient. They require police to refer a person to drug treatment in the first two instances before issuing a citation on the third. No one in Cowlitz County has been cited for a misdemeanor drug offense since then, Thurman said.
When asked why their own laws wouldn’t similarly require two referrals, Kelso Police Chief Darr Kirk said people are still “engaged in services” to get treatment.
“To say there’s not two referrals before the first charge is a little deceiving because once they’re in court, they can go down a treatment path,” he said.
Cowlitz isn’t the first to plan new drug laws since the session ended. Cities that have publicly discussed it include Seattle, Bellingham and Marysville, as well as King and Snohomish counties.
But those local laws aren’t identical and would, according to Stonier, create a problematic “patchwork.” A bill passed by lawmakers would encompass the entire state.
“I don’t blame local jurisdictions for trying to take care of their backyard, but I do feel the No. 1 priority is to have a uniform policy for the state so everyone is clear on what the law is and can apply it equitably,” Stonier said.
The representative said she expects a broader group of lawmakers will support the bill that lands in the special session. When last month’s bill failed, it had no support from Republicans and lost support from a handful of Democrats.
There are sticking points, Stonier said. The left-most Democrats want drug possession to be a misdemeanor – as opposed to the more punitive gross misdemeanor – while Republicans want to give prosecutors the discretion to charge a person without the two mandatory referrals.
“The idea is to come up with a proposal that is going to have bipartisan votes, and balance criminalization with treatment,” she said.
