Denver City Wire

Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl recently took to social media to criticize Gov. Jared Polis' (D-CO) response to bringing Colorado's fentanyl crisis under control.

“Colorado has reached a crisis point concerning fentanyl,” Ganahl wrote in an Aug. 28 Facebook post, accompanied by a link to The Gazette's guest column piece she coauthored with Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers (R). “Gov. Jared Polis and the Democrat-led Legislature passed up a chance to do something meaningful about it, and that means more Coloradans will needlessly die. We need to treat this poison like the weapon of mass destruction it is.”

In the guest column, Ganahl and Suthers expressed that there should be an end to Colorado’s status as a sanctuary state, and possessing any amount of fentanyl should be classified as a felony.

In 2019, Polis signed HB 19-1263 into law, making possession of up to 4 grams of fentanyl a misdemeanor.

Law enforcement officers and local officials spoke out against the bill, according to KRDO News, with Suthers saying at a news conference in January of this year, "Legislators are on a different planet. They don't see what law enforcement is going through on a day-to-day basis."

In 2021 in El Paso County, fentanyl led to more overdose deaths than methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin combined.

"Marijuana is not the same thing as fentanyl, but yet fentanyl is being treated the same way as marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, all these different drugs -- and not all of them have the same effect on people as fentanyl does," Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said, according to KRDO News.

In the wake of that pushback, Polis signed HB 22-1263 into law in May, changing the criminal penalties related to fentanyl once again to make possession of more than 1 gram of the synthetic opiate a felony.

Colorado experienced the second-highest increase in fentanyl deaths in the country between 2019 and 2021, Axios Denver reported, citing a February report from the nonprofit Families Against Fentanyl. Fentanyl overdose deaths in the state rose from 5 in 2000 to 540 in 2020 to around 800 in 2021.

Ganahl defeated Greg Lopez in the Republican primary in June and will face off against incumbent Polis in the November general election, according to Ballotpedia.