WA: Washington law enforcement seek solutions to address uptick in child fentanyl overdoses

State lawmakers are trying to fix a gap in the law to address the skyrocketing number of kids overdosing from fentanyl across Washington state.

Prosecutors and law enforcement are pushing for felony child endangerment to include exposing children to the deadly drug. The law was last updated almost 20 years ago, in 2005, when meth was the main problem, but it doesn’t include fentanyl.

Right now, those putting kids in danger with fentanyl can only be charged with a gross misdemeanor unless the child dies.

With the explosion of fentanyl in recent years, prosecutors in King County are seeing a dangerously growing problem with the deadly drug taking more and more lives of children.

King County had its first criminal case of a child dying from a fentanyl overdose in 2019. By 2022, it had tripled.

“Last year in 2022 was a record year for toddlers overdosing on fentanyl,” King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Celia Lee said. “We had three confirmed fentanyl overdose deaths in toddlers in 2022, which is unheard of and a shocking number.”

The number of children dying from synthetic opioids like fentanyl has also been rising statewide.

According to the Washington State Department of Health (DOH), 11 kids died from synthetic opioid drug overdoses in 2019. In just four years, that number jumped to 31 kids dying in 2022. Most of those deaths were from fentanyl, with King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties seeing the highest numbers out of the entire state.

But prosecutors and law enforcement said current laws on felony child endangerment don’t yet address fentanyl.

“Currently, if you knowingly or intentionally allow a child to ingest fentanyl, as long as the child does not die, you would get a citation,” Gunnar Skollingsberg with the Vancouver Police Department said during a state Senate committee hearing earlier this year.

“We’ve had children ingest fentanyl and suffer brain damage, need to be revived, and have pretty serious long-term effects,” Lee added.

State lawmakers said the current law was updated in 2005 to address meth and hasn’t been updated since.

“We thought this was kind of an obvious fix to address the real-world dangers we were seeing,” Clark County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Erik Podhora said. “When the bill was crafted 20-plus years ago, the concern was kids being exposed to meth labs and methamphetamine.”

Senate Bill 5010 aims to expand felony child endangerment to include fentanyl and synthetic opioids, as well as smoke from those drugs.

“[It’s] very long overdue, particularly as soon as it started happening in 2021 when it was a particularly high number we should’ve probably addressed it then,” State Sen. Lynda Wilson (R – 17th District, Vancouver), who is sponsoring the bill, said, “This is not something we want our children to have to go through, and we need them to be held accountable.”

David Trieweiler of the Washington Defender Association is among those who don’t believe this is the answer to the problem.

“Creating new felonies with substantial prison time for what is at its core a substance abuse problem is not the way to go,” Trieweiler said. “We’ve tried this route for 50 years, and it’s been an utter and complete failure.”

But prosecutors see this as a much-needed tool and a fix to the law that can’t wait.

“The need is urgent, it’s overdue and I think this is something that was possible,” Podhora said. “We’re behind the ball already.”

“It would allow us to charge more cases, and it can be used as a mechanism to help parents to get the help they need,” Lee added.

Those behind the bill said it also addresses other synthetic opioids that might come up in the future. The bill passed unanimously in the state Senate and now heads to the House for consideration.

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