Fentanyl and other deadly drugs continue to ravage neighborhoods across Seattle and Washington state.
A recent decision by newly elected Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson to allow open use of dangerous drugs highlights the extent to which Democrats are increasingly out of step with public safety and common sense.
These policies are often described as compassionate or evidence-based, but history shows that once decriminalization takes hold through court decisions or executive action, it rarely remains limited — and the consequences are felt far beyond the city where it begins.
What began as a public health and harm-reduction effort is now edging toward normalization of dangerous drug use, with consequences that erode accountability, embolden dealers, and undermine recovery.
Recently, signals from Seattle’s new administration have raised concerns that enforcement against open drug use may be deprioritized — a shift that Seattle Police Officers Guild President Mike Solan blasted as “horrifically dangerous” and likely to “create more death and societal decay … death, destruction and more human suffering.”
Solan’s concern isn’t abstract. Police have warned that without the ability to book repeat offenders for drug use in public spaces, there’s little leverage to push people toward sobriety or treatment. The result is open drug use becoming a tolerated norm — a public-safety and public-health catastrophe in the making.
Why should a potential drug policy decision made in Seattle concern a legislator in Southwest Washington? Because too often, policy experiments that begin in Seattle don’t stay there. Through Democratic majorities in Olympia, those ideas are frequently scaled statewide — regardless of whether they work or reflect the realities and values of the rest of Washington.
That pattern matters because the Legislature is still dealing with the consequences of the Washington Supreme Court’s 2021 Blake decision, which invalidated the state’s felony drug possession law. In response, lawmakers adopted a compromise in 2023 — reclassifying simple possession and public use as gross misdemeanors — an attempt to balance accountability with access to treatment.
Now, as fentanyl and synthetic drugs continue to devastate communities, House Republicans used the 2025 legislative session to introduce a slate of public safety bills aimed at restoring consequences and strengthening enforcement. These proposals included increasing penalties for fentanyl distribution that results in serious harm or death (House Bill 1000), requiring sobriety before children are reunified with parents in homes affected by active drug abuse (House Bill 1092), and expanding multijurisdictional drug task forces to improve enforcement capacity (House Bill 1454). They reflect a growing recognition that the drug crisis demands accountability — not permissiveness. But those efforts have largely stalled in a Legislature where Democrats hold the majority.
Instead of fortifying legal and treatment responses with accountability, weak-on-crime approaches and legislative compromises that downplay deterrence are raising real fears. These policies create a new kind of prison system in Washington — one without bars, where addiction locks people into intergenerational poverty, lifelong substance abuse, and chronic homelessness.
Public safety isn’t served by soft language or benign neglect. In Seattle, police leaders warn that the city’s ability to prosecute drug crimes is already hollowed out by policy. The rest of the state should be on guard as similar ideas circulate in Olympia.
And yet, the policy trajectory remains tilted toward minimizing legal consequences. While no one disputes the need for compassionate care, tolerance without accountability does not lift people out of addiction. It imprisons them in it. A Washington that treats dangerous drug use as a non-issue in public places risks becoming a magnet for crime, homelessness, and despair.
We must push back and emphasize stronger enforcement, better support for law enforcement, improved treatment infrastructure, and deeper accountability measures. But without significant bipartisan support and alignment with public safety goals, these proposals may remain on the sidelines.
We must insist that protecting public spaces, supporting recovery, and holding traffickers and repeat offenders accountable are not mutually exclusive. Compassion without consequences is not compassion; it’s surrender. And while Democrats argue tolerance equals humanity, the human toll — overdoses, shattered neighborhoods, and communities afraid to walk their own streets — tells a very different story.
If Washington is serious about ending cycles of addiction and building healthier communities, policy cannot dismiss the rule of law, empower dealers, or treat dangerous drug use as a harmless personal choice. Accountability and treatment must march hand in hand — or we will continue to pay the price in human suffering and public decay.
Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, represents the 20th Legislative District and is the House Republican Caucus chair.
