SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Candidate Jinyoung Englund aims to ban safe injection sites
Oct 18, 2017, 5:47 AM
Jinyoung Englund, Republican candidate for 45th district Senate seat in Washington state at her campaign headquarters in Woodinville, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
After Initiative 27 was shut down in court, halting efforts to ban safe injection sites in King County, a Senate candidate is stepping up with her own plan.
“I would gladly sponsor legislation to ban Washington state from being an experiment for these sites,” Jinyoung Englund told Dori Monson.
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Englund is running against Democrat Manka Dhingra for the 45th District’s open senate seat. Sen. Andy Hill held the position until he died in late 2016.
Englund is using the recent court decision to make the point that Washington needs a balance of power in politics.
“…because some people in government believe they know better than the people,” Englund said.
“I would seek to (ban injection sites) in a bipartisan way,” she said. “The goal is not that one party is worse than the other … how can we work together to come to common sense solutions? The goal of heroin injection sites is to reduce harm; that doesn’t make sense. That is neither compassionate nor sustainable. Our ultimate goal should be to help addicts recover fully … these injection sites would only take funding away from those efforts.”
Legislation through Olympia would be a different route than the initiative process. A judge ruled that I-27 — which attempted to ban safe injection sites — was beyond the scope of the initiative process. Englund says that having nearly 70,000 people sign a petition for the initiative indicates that there is a desire to ban them — two safe injection sites are proposed for King County.
“That is the people very clearly saying ‘We do not want heroin injection sites,'” Englund said. “It was supposed to be on this November’s ballot, but King County kicked the can down to February and now they’ve allowed this judge to once again circumvent the will of the people because they think they know better.”
“It’s just more of the same … those extreme politicians in Seattle and the King County council are really selective on what the people should or should not vote on,” she said. “They are selective only when it’s convenient to them or it agrees with their ideology.”
