WA House votes to keep drug possession a misdemeanor

OLYMPIA — As the clock struck midnight in the House of Representatives Tuesday, a pin-drop silence fell while Rep. Stephanie Barnard, R-Pasco, talked about her niece, who died from a drug overdose in 2021.

“I would just ask you, Madam Speaker, to consider a paradigm shift, to consider that her freedom to do what she wanted and to do drugs on the streets openly, that that was not freedom at all,” Barnard said. “It was bondage. She was in complete bondage to her addiction.”

The emotional late-night debate over how much the state should punish drug possession concluded in a vote shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday to keep possession as a misdemeanor, 54-41.

As the amendments flew and the minutes ticked by, the debate showed the collision of philosophies playing out in the Legislature over how strictly the law should treat people using illicit drugs. Many lawmakers recounted stories of loved ones who struggled with substance-use disorder, and a couple spoke about their own recovery.

Some Democrats expressed ambivalence about keeping a criminal penalty for possession, while Republicans urged more measures to get people into treatment.

Lawmakers have been wrestling over how harshly to punish drug possession since 2021, when the Washington state Supreme Court threw out the state’s felony drug possession statute as unconstitutional. Just after the court decision, lawmakers voted to keep a criminal penalty for drug possession but take it down two notches to a misdemeanor.

That law expires in July, so lawmakers would need to act before then if they want to maintain some sort of criminal penalty for drug possession.

Wednesday’s vote saw mostly Democrats voting in favor of the policy, Senate Bill 5536, although three Republicans also cast their support.

“Incarceration never did anything for me except add another layer of trauma to my life and to the lives of my children,” said Rep. Tarra Simmons, D-Bremerton, who served time in prison. She said she will mark 12 years clean from drugs and alcohol in September.

Simmons said the bill was “very hard” for her to vote on but that the bill would help build “a system that has multiple pathways to recovery.”

Rep. Gina Mosbrucker, R-Goldendale, said there were “too many offramps” in the bill.

“There’s too many places where you could fail, where we’re setting people up to fail,” she said.

The policy passed Wednesday differs from the version passed by the Senate last month, which stepped up penalties to a gross misdemeanor and required jail time in some circumstances.

That means the bill’s passage in the House isn’t the final word, but it is a milestone as the Legislature nears the end of its session. The chambers must agree on a policy in order for it to become law.

The bill the House passed requires pretrial diversion if a person is arrested solely for drug possession. A person charged with possession would be referred to a program that would perform an assessment and refer the person to treatment and services if the assessment determines that’s what they need. If the assessment determines they don’t need treatment or services, they could be sentenced to up to 120 hours of community service. They could then get their charges dropped if they “substantially complied” with treatment or services or finished the community service.

The bill also sets up an option for probation after conviction in cases where a person performed community service or complied with treatment or services.

“The theme, really, is to provide a helping hand rather than handcuffs,” Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, said in an interview last week. “And we hope that police and prosecutors, by giving them the discretion that they’ve asked for now, will opt to take the more therapeutic path and work closely with behavioral health professionals.”

The House’s approach drew criticism from some lawmakers who sought a harsher penalty, and from those who favored less punitive measures.

“We can do better,” Mosbrucker said in a statement, adding that the House’s version “doesn’t truly address the heart of the issue and help those fighting addiction.”

M. Lorena González, legislative director for the ACLU of Washington and former Seattle City Council member, said that Washingtonians were “painfully aware that ‘scared straight’ strategies leveraging the fear and trauma of arrest and incarceration is political spin at best and life-threatening too frequently.”

“It is discouraging to watch the leadership of legislators who’ve studied, witnessed, and experienced the devastation of drug policies rooted in marginalization be met with 1980s political rhetoric,” González said in a statement. “The electorate is ahead of Olympia on this issue.”

It’s not yet clear exactly how the debate will play out between the chambers.

Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, said midday Wednesday she “will be doing a deep dive” to review the House’s changes. From there, lawmakers have a couple of options of legislative processes to use to resolve differences. While the chambers differ on the criminal penalty, she believes the versions have key aspects in common.

“The framework is still the same, and I think that’s very encouraging,” Dhingra said. “So the framework is very much a public health approach, where people really want diversion options, they want the ability for people to get into treatment.”

The last day of the legislative session is April 23.