Alaska’s Governor is High on a New Drug War
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has been accused of many, many (many) things, but imagination isn’t one of them.
So it was no surprise last week when the world’s foremost Big Tex impersonator unveiled what he hopes will be a signature piece of second-term legislation, a predictably draconian crime bill that would cast fentanyl as the new crack cocaine in an Alaska revival of the wildly successful 1980s smash-hit The War on Drugs.
Nick lived down the street from me growing up. Big, goofy kid, always had a smile going. If you live in America, you already know where this story is going. Got hooked on pills in his early 20s. Overdosed. Died. Short obituary in the newspaper. Family devastated. You know the story. Another desperate death in a country where these kinds of things happen almost every day.
Last year 253 people died due to drug overdoses in Alaska, a brutally high number in a state with fewer residents than Charlotte, N.C. That’s an increase of more than 70% from the previous year and echoes a trend seen nationwide. Doctors and researchers say synthetic fentanyl, a powerful painkiller, is the primary driver of this increase, with the drug’s extreme potency linked to many of the more than 100,000 deaths in 2021.
Most everyone agrees this is horrible, and it’s clear the widespread use of fentanyl has helped exacerbate a growing trend that actually began long before the drug exploded onto the scene about a decade ago.
Politicians like Dunleavy never let a tragedy go unexploited, and thus the governor has unveiled a proposed law that he claims will address the issue of overdose deaths in Alaska through the imposition of longer, more severe punishments for those convicted of selling fentanyl that proves lethal. According to a press release, Dunleavy’s law would allow for fentanyl dealers to be charged with homicide if the drugs they sell result in an overdose death. The proposed law would also eliminate “good time” credit for convicted dealers, meaning they won’t be able to receive reduced sentences in exchange for good behavior while incarcerated.
Dunleavy didn’t come up with these ideas. They’re simply retreads of the same old “tough on crime” laws used for decades by politicians pandering to voters on both the left and right, laws that have been proven time and again to be ineffective, costly, counterproductive and often discriminatory.
Charging drug dealers with murder is one of those things that sounds nice on paper and plays great with the “shoot your local heroin dealer” crowd, but will do little to curb any of the root causes of Alaska’s overdose issues. According to research presented by the Fair and Just Prosecution organization, “There is no empirical evidence that [drug-induced homicide] prosecutions save lives. Analyses of drug-induced homicide practices in jurisdictions in New Jersey, Tennessee, North Carolina, Illinois, Louisiana, and New York, found that despite dramatic growth in drug-induced homicide prosecutions, all of the jurisdictions experienced significant increases in overdose deaths, ranging from 7.6% to 20.1% in a single year.”
In fact, laws like Dunleavy’s may in fact exacerbate overdose deaths because the friends of victims may be afraid of prosecution if they seek medical attention or call 911.
As for the reduction of “good time” for dealers, it’s hard to imagine a more counterproductive mechanism than taking away one of the few carrots the state has to encourage people to turn their lives around while in prison. Alaska’s costly and ineffective prison system is already in a dismal and neglected state rife with overwork, abuse and mismanagement. By removing incentives within the prisons for inmates to do well, Dunleavy’s plan would only exacerbate poor conditions on the inside and make the lives of both inmates and corrections officers more difficult — and dangerous.
Dunleavy timed his proposal during the home stretch of his re-election campaign for maximum effect, and it’s likely to go over well with the governor’s base, whose one-track philosophy on public safety always boils down to more cops, more prisons, more inmates. It never works. If putting more people in jail made life safer for everyone, Alaska would be the safest place in the universe. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the state already incarcerates 718 of every 100,000 of its residents, a figure the PPI says is higher than any democracy on the planet.
The result of Dunleavy’s bill, if enacted, will be to disproportionately punish the poorest and more vulnerable communities in our state. Alaska Natives and African Americans are more likely to die of a drug overdose than their white counterparts, and Alaska Natives are incarcerated at rates four times higher than white Alaskans. Dunleavy’s bill does nothing to address the root causes of addiction and will therefore only result in the furtherance of Alaska’s prison-industrial complex while failing to provide the kind of social services proven to reduce chemical dependency.
Dunleavy claims those parts are coming, and that his crime bill is part of a “holistic” approach to combating Alaska’s overdose issues. If that were the case, why hasn’t the governor unveiled the rest of his plan? Why hasn’t he announced an increase in state funding for social and mental health services? Why hasn’t he directed state health officials to begin work on harm reduction strategies for users? Why hasn’t he directed the attorney general to go after pharmaceutical companies, whose deceptive marketing practices are far more responsible for the opioid epidemic than any individual dealer? There’s dozens of things he could be doing as governor that would make a real difference, and yet the only thing he can come up with is to “lock ’em up.”
We all know why Dunleavy hasn’t done more. It’s because he doesn’t actually have a plan, he just wants to get elected and look tough. That’s great for him — the big guy is probably going to win — but it’s not going to do anything for the thousands of Alaskans searching desperately for some glimmer of hope in this ongoing storm of death.
Matt Tunseth is a longtime Alaska journalist and former editor of the Chugiak-Eagle River Star, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and Anchorage Press.
