Community, medical organizations oppose drug homicide bill

May 22, 2018 1:43 pm

By: The Associated Press

Email: news@abc6.com

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) _ More than a dozen medical and community organizations are asking the Rhode Island Senate to reject a bill that would punish drug dealers for fatal overdoses.

The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Services wrote in a letter to senators that the bill would have a “deleterious effect” on efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. The American Civil Liberties Union was among the organizations that signed the letter.

Democratic Attorney General Peter Kilmartin introduced the bill, which would levy up to a lifelong prison sentence on those convicted of providing drugs to people who fatally overdose. It is scheduled for a full Senate vote Wednesday.

The letter says the bill would punish low-level drug dealers instead of “predatory drug traffickers,” is unnecessarily broad and doesn’t account for culpability.