The fentanyl crisis in Virginia is showing no signs of letting up any time soon. But a new task force will be taking a look at the issue.
The rapid rise in fentanyl overdoses is causing concern among lawmakers, although they’re not yet on the same page about how to handle the situation. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell says the General Assembly faces a choice.
"Do we attack it the way we attacked things in the 90s where we created lots of new penalties, mandatory minimums and new crimes to give prosecutors basically a lot of power to leverage people into sentences," he asks. "Or, do we treat this more as a mental health situation?"
That's why members of the General Assembly created a new task force to consider the policy choices and how they would work. For example, how much does an individual need to have to be prosecuted as a dealer versus helped as a patient suffering from substance abuse disorder? The bill creating the task force was introduced by Republican Senator Bill DeSteph of Virginia Beach.
"At what amount is lethal and harmful," asks DeSteph. "And do we reclassify our drug dealer, drug use type stuff based on these small amounts of fentanyl that is enough to kill somebody?"
The task force will be meeting for two years, and they’ve a number of thorny questions to answer about drawing the line between who should get help and who should be prosecuted.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
