Families of victims killed by fentanyl poisoning, turned away repeatedly by state legislative committees, launched an effort Tuesday, June 6, to take their bid to tighten drug laws directly to the voters.
Aided by Assemblymember Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach, the families announced a campaign for legislators to place on the ballot a proposed law that would make it easier to charge repeat fentanyl dealers with homicide. The proposed ballot measure — ACA 12 — was introduced Monday through the constitutional amendment process, and would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote in the Assembly and the Senate.
Dixon and supporters challenged legislators to let the people, not the politicians, decide the fate of the proposed “Alexandra’s Law,” which would require courts to warn defendants convicted of dealing fentanyl-laced drugs that they could be charged with murder if they do it again and someone dies.
The court warning could be used by prosecutors to show that dealers selling fentanyl-tainted drugs are aware of the potential deadly consequences. Victims often do not know the drugs they are buying are boosted with fentanyl.
Alexandra’s Law has been rejected at least four times in three years by the Democrat-led public safety committees in the Assembly and Senate for fear of returning to overly broad drug policies of the past that jammed jails with people of color. The constitutional amendment is an attempt to sidestep those committees.
The proposed law is named for Alexandra Capelouto, a 20-year-old college student who died of fentanyl poisoning two days before Christmas in 2019 at the family home in Temecula.
At a Sacramento news conference Tuesday, her father, Matt Capelouto, said that it’s time to let the voters decide how to combat the tens of thousands of deaths each year attributed to the synthetic opioid, which is 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin.
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