Colorado voters are rightfully worried about record-breaking crime.
Criminals, both inside and outside of government are violating the property & civil rights of the people.
State Senator Kevin Priola is one such example.
In this guest article, Karl Honegger explains that Priola’s record has been detrimental to the Liberty of Colorado citizens.
But Honegger’s criticism doesn’t stop there.
Colorado Republicans who find it easy to demonize Priola should recognize their own misjudgements.
Kevin Priola and House Bill 19-1263
by Karl Honegger
Kevin Priola made national news by switching his party affiliation.
The Liberty Scorecard includes the last 4 years of his voting record and gives him a lifetime score of 26 out of 100.
For those aware of Priola’s record, it’s no surprise that he came out as a Democrat.
Today, those who advocate for the recall of Kevin Priola are right to say he doesn’t reflect the values of those he claims to represent, but he almost never did.
He consistently voted to undermine individual rights, failed to advocate for free markets, devalued personal responsibility, and assaulted the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
He did this while a Republican.
Organizations like the Colorado Republican Committee and the Lincoln Club still donated to his 2020 State Senate campaign.
This is blind partisanship.
Hopefully, Republican party leadership will perform some self-reflection on what makes their party seem unattractive to unaffiliated voters and especially to Millennials.
However, one of the bills that they point to as a reason to recall Priola has nothing to do with why he has such a poor voting record.
Colorado House Bill 19-1263 decriminalized controlled substance possession and is being blamed as the origin of the “fentanyl crisis” in Colorado.
The Gazette editorial board has already written three letters this year calling out this bill directly.
CD-7 Republican Primary Candidate, Tim Reichert, argued that [the] “numbers don’t lie; decriminalization kills”.
Barbara Kirkmeyer, my State Senator, tried to get her fellow Republicans to repeal HB19-1263.
As the Republican nominee for CD-8, she has made her advocacy for harsher penalties for fentanyl possession a point in her congressional campaign.
But if Republicans like Vicki Marble and (former police officer) Shane Sandridge supported this bill, how could they have gotten it so wrong?
After all, Shane Sandridge received the top honors in 2021 for the Liberty Scorecard and Vicki Marble received the 2018 Senate Champion award from the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.
They knew what they were doing.
The libertarian leaning principles behind this bill have nothing to do with the current opioid crisis.
When I ran for Broomfield City Council in 2017, I met a woman with a daughter addicted to opioids.
This mother recommended I read “Chasing the Scream” by Johann Hari.
This book opened my eyes to how the progressive war on drugs has been co-opted by “law and order” Conservatives and how it is failing.
It is important to realize the long history Colorado has with opioids.
It is estimated in Denver that by 1880 there were up to 17 opium dens, rather surprising with a census of 238 Chinese.
This was because one estimate claims 60 percent of the customers were white.
It is estimated that narcotic abuse in the U.S. was worse in the late 1800’s on a per capita basis due to doctors over-prescribing.
Due to President Woodrow Wilson signing the Harrison Narcotics act, which went into law in 1915, Denver’s opium dens disappeared.
By 1917, doctors were supposed to stop their practice of prescribing opioids to addicts.
However, a 1925 Supreme Court case, Linder v. United States, clarified that doctors were legally allowed to prescribe heroin or morphine for addicted patients.
American doctors continued to do so until the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was created in 1930 and appointed Harry Anslinger as commissioner.
As alcohol Prohibition was ending, Anslinger was ramping up his war on doctors who prescribed pure opioids for their addicted patients.
How did Colorado get from the opium and morphine of the 1910’s to the fentanyl of today?
The iron law of prohibition explains that stronger forms of a drug will rise in popularity the harder government agents enforce prohibition.
Opioid overdose deaths are also primarily a consequence of the progressive idea of prohibition.
Poisonings of all kinds only account for 3% of suicides in Colorado, overdose deaths are not an intentional attempt to end one’s life. Rather, the harsher the government crackdown on a drug the more likely the opioids used are stronger than an addict realizes, thus someone unintentionally gives themself too much.
Progressivism believes that intended ends justify the means, thus the emphasis on prohibition without understanding the underlying problem.
When more thieves, rapists, murderers, and abusers are locked up, there is less theft, rape, murder and abuse in the community.
But when a doctor was allowed to provide pure heroin to addicts in Liverpool England, there was a 93% drop in thefts and burglary.
The addicts no longer turned to crime to fund their addiction.
This experiment found that addicts stopped trying to market heroin to get more customers to fund their addiction.
Coloradans don’t have to put up with the power of the drug cartels and the car theft.
Switzerland has found the best way to return law, order, and cleanliness to a beautiful mountainous state.
They allow adult addicts who have been dependent for two years and have failed two addiction treatments to receive tiny daily doses of heroin at a clinic.
They must turn in their driver’s license and are allowed no more than two take home doses.
The Swiss saw drug overdose deaths drop by 64% and home theft by 98% (they have half as many cars as we do). Colorado has endured 50 years of an official war on opioids, we are the leading state in car theft, with a record level of overdoses.
House Bill 19-1263 did not cause this, rather the progressive mindset of using law enforcement to stop the possession of opioids.
Democrat Kevin Priola deserves to go and so does the “Conservative case” for a harsher version of prohibition.
Let’s look to Switzerland to clean up our state and put an end to the open drug scenes and resulting violence.
Karl Honegger is a certified treasury professional and is on the Emerging Leaders Alumni Board with the Steamboat Institute. He is a board member of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers. Karl works in Denver for a healthcare company.
Let Karl know what you think, leave a comment below!
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