SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: LEAD program expansion means drugs are legal in King County

Sep 12, 2018, 5:11 AM

LEAD program...

(SPD)

(SPD)

Drugs are now legal in King County. Every drug is now legalized in King County, thanks to the expansion of the LEAD program.

The prosecutor’s office won’t phrase it that way, but that is the practical effect of this LEAD program announcement on Tuesday afternoon. If you have a small amount of any drug — heroin, meth, crack — you will not be prosecuted. Every single drug is legal in King and Snohomish Counties.

Does anybody think we’re on the right path? Is there anyone in their right mind who believes that legalizing heroin and meth is the right path? Look at how our schools and our playgrounds are filled with used heroin needles.

RELATED: Seattle is the drug capital of the United States

If you make our region the path of least resistance for drug use in the United States of America, of course all the drug users are going to come here. They could be sent to jail for possessing a small amount of meth in Texas, or they could hop a Greyhound to Seattle or Everett, where they have zero chance of being prosecuted, as long as it’s below a gram of meth.

I’ve said this a million times — we could spend a billion dollars on homelessness. But as long as we embrace policies that make us the moth lamp for drug users around the country, no matter how fast we build housing, we are going to have more drug addicts who have embraced living on the street coming into this region than we could ever have moved off the street by building housing.

They claim they are going to save more lives with this LEAD program. No, you’re going to bring more people who are on the pathway to killing themselves to our region.

We are on the wrong path. The more lenient we get, the more we are going to attract drug users from around the United States. That is a fact.

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Dori: LEAD program expansion means drugs are legal in King County