JASON RANTZ: Washington Dems' policy puts drug-addicted parents first, kids' safety last
Washington state Democrats’ commitment to enabling drug addiction has reached a new low. Instead of confronting a growing crisis where kids are overdosing or dying in homes riddled with fentanyl and meth, Democrats are offering lockboxes to drug-addicted parents.
It’s hard to decide what’s more tragic – this "solution" or their refusal to act when children’s lives hang in the balance.
A law passed in 2021 prevents the state from removing children from homes simply because their parents are drug addicts. Additionally, children couldn’t be removed solely due to poverty, inadequate housing or a parent’s mental illness unless it was specifically tied to imminent danger.
Democrats complained that Black families were being disproportionately separated as a result of drug addiction. This was a lazy way for activist-lawmakers to argue a policy is racist. Democrats also argued that this law would destigmatize drug addiction and reduce trauma for kids by keeping families together, while offering them support services by the state’s child protective services.
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The reality is that the law, implemented in 2023, was a death sentence for children across the state. As I detail in my book "What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities," the numbers speak for themselves.
According to a recent report, deaths or near-deaths of children in families of a drug-addicted parent under the supervision of child protective services went up by 114% in the four years since the law passed. In 2023, 70 children under the care of the state died or nearly died of an overdose, driven primarily by fentanyl. A state ombuds report showed that of 67 incidents involving accidental drug ingestions, 45 of the incidents involved children 11 years of age or younger.
Even when faced with these harrowing statistics as a direct result of their legislation, Washington Democrats didn’t change course. They doubled down, proudly embracing a lockbox initiative, a so-called "harm reduction" policy.
Harm reduction is pitched as a strategy to mitigate the risks of illicit substance abuse by providing paraphernalia that allows users to continue using in a "safer" manner. It amounts to little more than taxpayer-funded drug enabling.
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Washington state hands out drug lockboxes so parents can safely store their fentanyl or meth, as if that will protect a child living in such an environment. The state doesn’t track how many lockboxes they distribute to drug-addicted parents but admit it’s a high number.
It’s all so insulting. A lockbox won’t prevent kids from inhaling fentanyl smoke that lingers in the air or touching contaminated surfaces before ingesting fentanyl residue. It won’t protect them from needles, drug paraphernalia or neglect from parents who are too high to function.
If this sounds absurd, that’s because it is. But the state, through agencies like the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), has made clear that their priority is appeasing far-left activists over saving lives.
"We don’t want to be punitive," they say. So instead of holding parents accountable and removing children from dangerous environments, they’re passing out glorified Tupperware for fentanyl. And they’re doing it as a DCYF ombuds report categorically stated that "parental substance abuse is a major risk factor for child fatalities, maltreatment, and involvement with the child welfare system."
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This isn’t hyperbole. In fact, DCYF claims the lockboxes have been a success. Tell that to the family of Otis – a baby born with fentanyl in his system. Otis was left in the unsupervised care of his father, a prolific criminal and drug addict believed to be homeless. But good news: DCYF gave the father a lockbox.
Three weeks after taking custody, Otis’ tiny corpse was found naked, dumped in bushes in a nature reserve with meth in his system. Local prosecutors couldn’t compile enough evidence to successfully charge the father in Otis’ death. At the time of the investigation, detectives said they found drugs and drug paraphernalia on the father. Maybe he couldn’t fit it all in the lockbox?
While Democrats are distributing lockboxes and ignoring the risks they’re putting on children, Republicans in the state legislature are offering real solutions. Republican lawmakers pre-filed House Bill 1087, which would allow courts to consider parental drug use when determining whether a child should remain in the home.
In other words, the bill restores common sense to child welfare decisions. If you’re smoking fentanyl or cooking meth in your living room, you lose the right to parent until you get clean.
But without pressure from the public, Democrats may reject the move like they’ve done in the past. With total control in the House, Senate and governor’s mansion, they’ve been emboldened by liberal voters to continue down this deadly path.
For Washington Democrats, holding addicts accountable is an affront to their progressive ideology. It’s the same mindset that led to the disastrous Blake decision.
The Democrat-controlled Washington Supreme Court declared the state’s felony possession law unconstitutional under the absurd argument that it assumed someone with drugs on them knew they were carrying. Democrats could have fixed the law by adding the word "knowingly" to it -- making it a felony to knowingly possess illicit substances.
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Instead, Democrats effectively decriminalized hard drugs and turned Seattle and other Washington cities into drug-riddled wastelands. Overdose fatalities and drug-related crimes naturally skyrocketed. The number of children in the state system who died or nearly died followed the same upward trend.
Though political pressure finally forced Democrats to recriminalize drugs, we still see the consequences every day: open-air drug markets, spikes in overdoses and children who die because the state refuses to protect them.
The Washington lockbox debacle encapsulates everything wrong with the modern Left. They’re so committed to avoiding "stigmatizing" addicts that they’re willing to let children suffer and die. And they expect us to applaud them for it.
But the truth is, we should stigmatize addiction when it puts kids at risk. Drug use isn’t a harmless lifestyle choice, even less so when it’s happening in homes where children live, breathe and play.
At some point, we have to ask: how many children have to die before Democrats admit they’re wrong? How many grieving families will it take before they acknowledge that lockboxes won’t fix this crisis? Because right now, the message from the state couldn’t be clearer: addicts’ rights come before children’s lives.