Protesters gathered in front of California Sen. Toni Atkins’s (D-San Diego) office in San Diego on May 9—National Fentanyl Awareness Day—requesting the majority leader take a bipartisan fentanyl bill to the floor for a vote.
Family members wearing t-shirts and carrying pictures of their deceased loved ones joined with advocacy groups in a unified call for action to end the state’s fentanyl crisis.
Representatives from Atkins’s office declined an invitation to attend, according to organizers.
“We’re asking Pro Tem Sen. Atkins to use her judiciary authority and bring this bill to the Senate,” Matt Capelouto told The Epoch Times. “This is a last-ditch effort. Sen. Atkins is the last lifeline. Otherwise, we’re done until 2024, and it’s a travesty for them not to be able to vote on it.”
At issue is Senate Bill 44, also known as Alexandra’s Law, named for Capelouto’s 20-year-old daughter Alexandra, who died from fentanyl poisoning two days before Christmas in 2019. Authored by Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), the bill is designed to give a warning to fentanyl dealers that if they sell the drug in the future and it leads to a death, they could face murder charges.
The bill’s 22 co-authors represented a majority of the Senate, but its Public Safety Committee voted on April 25 to not advance the bill forward.
During that committee hearing, Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) argued about the language of the bill and the potential for dangerous consequences.
Wiener called the admonishment a “nuclear murder warning” that could follow a convicted person for life.
“By him throwing in the word nuclear, he’s acting like someone that gets this admonishment is going straight to the electric chair,” Capelouto told The Epoch Times. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Written to mirror California’s Watson Advisement—a warning given after DUI convictions alerting defendants that if they cause the death of another person while driving impaired, they could be charged with murder—Democratic members of the committee reviewing the bill disagreed with their own consultants’ analysis and argued the bill was different from the DUI admonishment.
Wiener also repeatedly argued about the concept of foreknowledge, claiming that a suitable DUI defense is someone not being aware they are intoxicated.
According to Hestrin, prosecutors do not have to prove that an intoxicated driver was aware of their inebriation, as the burden of proof lies only on showing the suspect’s blood alcohol level exceeded legal limits and the individual drove a vehicle while under the influence.
“He’s conflating these two things, but they don’t have to know they’re impaired when they drive,” the district attorney said in the video. “My prosecutors go into court, DUI is one the most common, and never do we have to prove that the person knew they were over the legal limit or impaired.”
Frustrated by the committee’s repeated denial of punitive fentanyl legislation this year, family members during the protest called for justice.
“We don’t have a single law on the books that holds a drug dealer accountable for a death,” Capelouto said. “It’s incomprehensible.”
A difference in strategies—one that favors a public health policy stance, and another that curbs distribution with enhanced penalties—are opportunities for collaboration that are currently being missed, according to victim’s families.
“There seems to be a great divide between harm reduction and incarceration,” Capelouto said. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
While methods to prevent deaths and overdoses are a favored course of action for Wiener and Skinner, victims’ family members say they are only part of the solution.
“Not one harm reduction technique would have saved my daughter or thousands of others,” Capelouto said. “She paid the ultimate price, and it wasn’t worth a death sentence, while the person on the other side of the transaction—that caused a death—gets to walk free.”
The admonishment proposed by the bill offers a preventive tool that educates and informs, according to supporters of the legislation.
“This is preventative, and some young drug dealers will get this warning and it will set them on the right path,” Capelouto said.
Hestrin, the district attorney, agreed, stating in the video that the advisement would offer benefits and alter patterns of behavior for some that receive it.
“If you’re dealing drugs, which is illegal ... what is implicit is to make your choices wisely in the future,” he said. “You might want to stop dealing drugs.”
For now, families are asking Atkins to allow the Senate the opportunity to hear the bill, and Capelouto said he is confident that if she does, it will pass.
“This committee was hell-bent on making sure that this did not pass to the floor, because they knew if it did, it would be supported by the Senate and become law,” he said.
