Centennial State News

The Colorado GOP recently said in a tweet that Colorado Democrats have failed to adequately address the state's fentanyl crisis. 

The founder of New Beginnings Recovery Center in Littleton has said that the number of people seeking help has risen significantly this year, and there aren't enough beds in the state to treat all of them. There are even fewer options for people with no insurance.

"Fentanyl is killing too many people in Colorado and across the country, yet Democrats like @SenatorBennet and @PolisForCO don’t seem to care enough to take the strong action needed to stop it," The Colorado GOP wrote in a Sept. 18 Twitter post.

According to The Denver Post, Mary Brewer, the founder and president of New Beginnings Recovery Center in Littleton, said the number of people seeking help for fentanyl addiction has risen significantly in the last year, and her center does not have room to treat everyone who applies.

"This is what breaks my heart," Brewer told the Denver Post, referring to a stack of applications from people seeking treatment. 

She said the center is one of the few places in the Denver area that will treat people without insurance or who are on Medicaid, and while they receive at least 50 calls from people asking for help every week, the center only has 24 beds. In-patient treatment takes between one and three months. The rate of drug overdose deaths in Colorado has risen dramatically in recent years, from 16.5 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2018 to 31.7 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2021, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment.

In 2019, Gov. Jared Polis signed HB 19-1263 into law, making possession of up to four grams of fentanyl a misdemeanor.

According to KRDO News, law enforcement officers and local officials spoke out against the bill, with Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers saying at a news conference in January of this year, "Legislators are on a different planet. They don't see what law enforcement is going through on a day-to-day basis."

Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said in an interview, "Marijuana is not the same thing as fentanyl, but yet fentanyl is being treated the same way as marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, all these different drugs – and not all of them have the same effect on people as fentanyl does."

In 2021 in El Paso County, fentanyl led to more overdose deaths than methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin.

In the wake of that pushback, Polis signed HB 22-1326 into law in May, changing the criminal penalties related to fentanyl once again to make possession of more than one gram of the synthetic opiate a felony.

Denver City Wire reports that other Colorado Republicans have criticized Polis and the state's Democrats for failing to address the fentanyl crisis, including gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl, who said in a Facebook post, "Colorado has reached a crisis point concerning fentanyl. Gov. Jared Polis and the Democrat-led legislature passed up a chance to do something meaningful about it, and that means more Coloradans will needlessly die. We need to treat this poison like the weapon of mass destruction it is."

Polis and Ganahl will face off in November's general election, according to Ballotpedia.