In an op-ed for The Chronicle posted on Friday, May 21, Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer vowed to promote a “real fix to Blake” — a recent Washington State Supreme Court ruling that struck down laws criminalizing the simple possession of controlled substances (drugs).
In Prosecutor Meyer’s view, since the state Legislature chose to make small amounts of drug possession only a misdemeanor, versus a felony, the problem of Blake is not “fixed.”
But what needs to be fixed, exactly? The Blake decision revolved around the wording in Washington’s drug possession statute, which allowed people to be jailed for unknowingly possessing drugs. The plaintiff, Blake, was wearing jeans bought secondhand that happened to have meth in its coin pocket. Washington was the only state in the union to throw people in jail for a complete accident. Blake fixed that problem.
The real fix that Prosecutor Meyer should focus on is finding ways to help people struggling with substance abuse besides throwing them in cages, locked away and forgotten by society. Now, Prosecutor Meyer seems to genuinely believe that prison time incentivizes people struggling with substance abuse to seek treatment, stating, “what is clear is that someone suffering from addiction is not likely to voluntarily seek treatment without some intervention. This new law requires some intervention.”
If the intervention Prosecutor Meyer refers to is the threat of prison or jail time, the only way this statement could be clear is if it is clearly false. The consensus of research on penalizing controlled substance abusers with jail or prison time is, considering the net-effect of the policy, not only ineffective but harmful. While Prosecutor Meyer is welcome to his own interpretation of the evidence, to call it “clear” is false. Further, as a public official who is supposed to uphold the rule of law in Lewis County, I am greatly disturbed by his complete ignorance on the topic of drug policy research or, worse, his willingness to mislead the public.
The real fix needed is not for Blake, but the opioid epidemic still ravaging Lewis County. Toward this end, the solution must not start in Olympia, but Lewis County. Fortunately, Lewis County already has some trailblazing programs, such as Gather Church’s suboxone clinic, which has produced successful preliminary results in part of a University of Washington evaluation study. What else could we do here in Lewis County to actually help people struggling with controlled substance abuse? What if we treated drug addicts like alcoholics and began focusing on treatment instead of prison?
While many believe that those arrested on drug charges can access Drug Court, this simply isn’t the case for most people. In 2019, around 10 people graduated from Drug Court, while over 200 went to jail or prison. That’s a super-super-super majority locked up, not getting treatment.
Now, the Legislature has wisely decided to not make those struggling with drug addiction automatic felons, forcing local governments to think of interventions that actually help. Perhaps because of Prosecutor Meyer’s profession, he sees prison as the answer to everything. As the old adage goes: if you have a hammer, everything’s a nail. Well, the hammer of felonies didn’t help during the last five years of the opioid epidemic. It’s time to try some new tools.
Caleb Huffman
Centralia
