The legislation would have adopted into the city’s criminal code the state’s recent law criminalizing possession and making public use of drugs a gross misdemeanor, giving the city attorney the ability to prosecute those arrests. Without adopting the bill, Seattle police will still be able to make arrests under the new state law, but prosecutions will fall to the King County prosecutor.
The bill, proposed by City Attorney Ann Davison and sponsored by Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen, started in late April as a proposal to make public drug use a simple misdemeanor when a temporary state law was set to expire in July.
Then, after the Legislature failed to agree on a replacement for the stopgap possession law during its regular session, state legislators passed a bill in a May special session that makes drug possession a gross misdemeanor and criminalizes public use.
