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AUSTIN — A bill that calls for prosecuting fentanyl deaths as murder overwhelmingly passed the Texas House on Friday.
Such a move is needed to crack down on dealers amid a surge of fentanyl deaths across the state, Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, said Thursday from the House floor. The bill ratchets up penalties for making or distributing the powerful synthetic opioid, including allowing murder charges if the drug leads to someone’s death.
“On behalf of all our family members who have died innocently by taking medication laced with fentanyl, on behalf of all of our friends, we’re here today to tell the people who deal that drug: we’re going to pass a piece of legislation,” Goldman said. “We’re coming after you.”
The measure passed by a vote of 124 to 21 and heads to the Senate. On Thursday, protesters with the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance gathered in the House Gallery chanting, “No more drug war,” while lawmakers looked on. The protesters only made a brief appearance before they left the chamber.
Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat, said he knows the pain and suffering fentanyl has caused; however, the war on drugs has done nothing to curb drug use. Instead, he said it has led to mass incarceration that disproportionately affects Black and Latino Americans.
“What I’m here to do today is speak against the continuation of the drug war and the continuing incarceration of people for drug addiction instead of providing them the care and help they need to not be addicts,” Wu said.
In addition to upping criminal penalties, the bill also could change death certificates.
It generally calls for medical examiners to list “poisoning” as the cause and “homicide” as the manner of death when a toxicology report shows a lethal amount of fentanyl in a person’s system and an autopsy finds the drug caused the death. A separate bill requiring death certificates to use the term “fentanyl poisoning” if a toxicology report determines the person died from a fentanyl overdose also advanced Thursday afternoon.
The bill, which is a priority of the House Speaker and Gov. Greg Abbott, needs a final vote to advance to the Senate, which has already passed a similar measure.
Abbott named the fentanyl crisis an emergency item, meaning lawmakers can fast track bills on the topic. A number of efforts, however, remain in limbo with a month left in the legislative session.
The House signed off on an effort to legalize fentanyl test strips that can detect the presence of the deadly drug, but the measure stalled in the Senate.