Opinion: Colorado voters demanded action on fentanyl. They didn’t vote for a return to the war on drugs.

Colorado voters have spoken. Proposition 132 passed, delivering a significant victory to proponents of harsher criminal penalties for fentanyl offenses. Now comes the harder question: Will the state choose to save lives, or simply send more people to prison?

Gov.-elect Phil Weiser has already suggested that the legislature may need to revisit certain statutory ballot measures. He should make Proposition 132 a priority when lawmakers convene in January.

I write as a licensed addiction counselor who has spent more than 15 years working in substance use treatment, community mental health and harm reduction. I also know opioid addiction and recovery firsthand. I understand the desperation that accompanies this crisis, including the fear experienced by families watching someone they love struggle with addiction.

The families who supported Proposition 132 deserve to have their concerns taken seriously. Too many Coloradans have died, often after consuming drugs they never knew contained fentanyl. Their deaths demand accountability and meaningful action.

But compassion for grieving families should not require us to disregard what we know about addiction or embrace policies that may produce additional suffering.

Proposition 132 makes possession of even trace amounts of fentanyl a felony and imposes mandatory prison sentences of eight to 32 years for distribution, regardless of quantity. The distinction between trafficking for profit and sharing drugs among people struggling with addiction becomes dangerously blurred. Judicial discretion is curtailed, including consideration of circumstances involving someone unaware that fentanyl was present.

These distinctions matter. People with substance use disorders sometimes share or transfer drugs within their social networks. Treating those interactions as equivalent to large-scale trafficking does not make our communities safer.

Supporters argue that harsher punishment will deter distribution and compel people into treatment. But the National Institute of Justice has argued that increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. And treatment imposed under threat of incarceration is no substitute for accessible, evidence-based care.

The measure requires treatment for certain possession offenses while providing no corresponding funding to expand services. Meanwhile, Colorado’s nonpartisan fiscal analysts estimate that its additional costs will reach $68.2 million annually by the fifth year, largely through increased criminal justice expenditures.

Imagine investing those resources in medications for opioid use disorder, recovery housing, overdose prevention and community-based treatment instead.

We have evidence that these interventions work. A National Institutes of Health-supported study found that providing medications for opioid use disorder in jails was associated with substantially lower overdose mortality after release. Incarceration without effective treatment, meanwhile, can leave people especially vulnerable when they return to their communities.

There is another contradiction Colorado should confront.

In 2022, voters approved Proposition 122, decriminalizing personal possession of certain psychedelics and establishing a regulated natural medicine framework. I supported that initiative. Four years later, more Coloradans voted to intensify fentanyl penalties than voted against psychedelic reform.

Different elections cannot tell us how individual people voted. Still, the contrast raises an uncomfortable question: Are we embracing drug policy reform only when the substances and people involved appear sufficiently respectable?

It is relatively easy to endorse compassion and personal autonomy for someone seeking psychedelic therapy for healing. The more difficult test is whether those principles extend to someone battling fentanyl addiction.

These substances have profoundly different risks. That is precisely why policy must be grounded in evidence and proportionate responses rather than moral judgments about who deserves compassion.

Weiser has pointed to the legislative implementation of Proposition 122 as precedent for revisiting voter-approved measures. That precedent should apply here, too.

The 2027 legislature should restore meaningful distinctions between personal possession, low-level distribution and commercial trafficking; preserve judicial discretion and protections that encourage people to summon emergency help during overdoses; and expand opportunities for diversion into appropriate treatment.

Mandating treatment does not make it effective. Evidence for the long-term benefits of compulsory addiction treatment is weak, and coercion cannot substitute for the therapeutic engagement necessary for sustained recovery. Although voters endorsed this approach, lawmakers should not mistake a legal mandate for a clinical intervention, nor divert scarce resources from voluntary, evidence-based care to enforce it.

None of this requires excusing high-level criminal trafficking or minimizing the suffering of families devastated by fentanyl. It requires recognizing that protecting the public and punishing people are not interchangeable objectives.

Voters endorsed action. They did not establish that every provision of Proposition 132 is effective, humane or fiscally responsible.

Weiser and the General Assembly have an opportunity and an obligation to distinguish public safety from political theater.

Colorado should measure its response to fentanyl not by how many years of imprisonment it imposes, but by how many lives it saves.

Kevin Franciotti, of Littleton, is an addiction counselor and clinical psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience in community mental health, harm reduction and direct service work.

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