“It’s like two Vietnam wars every 12 months,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told a crowd assembled at New Life Outreach Church in Richmond’s Southside.
He was comparing the over 100,000 annual American deaths from overdoses, mainly fentanyl, to the 15-year failed war the U. S. was involved in. It’s a comparison he hopes it will help convince the legislature to take up a failed bill from last year which would make selling drugs laced with fentanyl equivalent to a murder charge.
“Going after dealers with every tool in our toolbox to make sure dealers are being held accountable for this poison that’s taking away our children,” Miyares said.
Miyares said statistics showed 3-5% of violent felons are committing 50% of violent crime and “when you get dealers off the street, people understand there are consequences for their behavior.”
“If I know I could be charged with murder if I lace my drugs with fentanyl I won't deal in that state,” he said, suggesting the country abandoning things like mandatory minimums lead to a spike in violent crime he said occurred in the last few years.
“There’s nothing new that’s advocated by any social justice warrior on crime that has not been previously advocated for in the 1970s with disastrous effects,” he said.
According to FBI statistics, violent crime spiked in 2000, the first year the stats are available. It’s been on the downswing ever since, though murder creeped back up in 2019 to levels not seen since the turn of the millennium.
The AG made his tough on crime pitch at a training event where people like Divine Covering Ministry Pastor and Richmond native Valerie Coley learned to use the overdose reversal drug Narcan and could meet others impacted by drug addiction.
But Coley, herself a recovering drug addict now 27 years sober, said harsher punishments for drug dealers wasn’t the answer.
“We have to definitely make more programs accessible,” Coley told Radio IQ. “When someone comes to you and says they want to change, they don't want to get high anymore, we need to do an assessment and find them placement. We need to invest more into facilities that will address this issue.”
Coley knows about the punitive side of drug addiction firsthand; she lost her kids and her freedom after being locked up for drug dealing -selling drugs to maintain her habit- before getting sober and turning her life around.
“Noone wakes up and wants to be an addict,” she said. “Addiction is not something people should be incarcerated for.”
And Arlington and Falls Church City public defender Brad Haywood, who founded the criminal justice reform group Justice Forward, agreed with Coley. He said increasing punishments for drug dealers is a relic of the failed war on drugs.
“Substance abuse disorder is a disease, it isn’t a crime, and we shouldn't approach it like a crime,” Haywood said, after letting out a heavy sigh and expressing hope that the public discourse had moved past such punitive efforts.
He pointed to the legislative effort Miyares championed and noted the jail time under the proposal, 5-40 years, was the same as if someone was convicted of selling fentanyl under current law.
“There’s nothing stopping a prosecutor from mentioning that fentanyl was included in a drug deal that led to death," he said. "It will be charged as manslaughter and the defendant will get a heck of a lot more time.”
The future of any such legislative effort is probably dead on arrival. While the bill got out of the House during the 2023 session, it was killed in the Senate Judiciary subcommittee where Democrats will again have a majority.
And Haywood stressed the proposed law’s duplicative punishment suggests any legislative effort would do more to help Miyares in a future gubernatorial run rather than impact the state’s battle with fentanyl.
“It’s not going to do anything besides advance Jason Miyares’ political career,” he said. “Otherwise, they should focus on evidence-based strategies.”
Those strategies include support systems like rehab and detox facilities for those convicted of drug crimes. But as the state prepares to author a new budget with drastically less federal money, it’s unclear if there would be financial support for new social programs.
But Miyares said he was prepared to ask for more money for prisons if the prosecution of fentanyl dealers leads to more convictions.
“I’d be happy to do so,” he said when asked about such a funding request.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
