Gov. Jared Polis can speak forcefully on the ongoing tragedy of drug overdose deaths in Colorado. Sadly, when it comes to ideas for solving the crisis, both Polis and HB 1326 are dead wrong.

In an interview this week, Polis reiterated his desire to see harsher criminal penalties for possession of fentanyl:

“I’m for felonizing any possession of fentanyl. It’s deadly, it’s killing people. But I will sign any bill that moves in that direction. I’m glad that law enforcement will have more tools to prevent these hundreds and thousands of deaths from occurring in our state.”

With HB22-1326: Fentanyl Accountability and Prevention, his dream is closer than ever. But any suggestion that increased law enforcement and tougher penalties will help curb overdose deaths demonstrates stunning ignorance of the past 40 years of the failed “war on drugs.”

The data is clear: criminal penalties do not deter addicts. According to a 2018 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, when penalties for crack cocaine increased in the 1980s, the result was a 595% increase in federal prison costs and minimal or no improvement in public safety.

Not even the risk of death served to deter the more than 700 Coloradans who died last year from fentanyl alone. And despite Polis’s claim that fentanyl is dissimilar to past drug epidemics – “Crack is an addictive drug. Fentanyl is a poison” – here he’s wrong again.

Fentanyl is indeed a highly addictive drug, a synthetic opioid developed by Janssen Pharmaceutica and prescribed for severe pain management. This addictive drug now tragically serves as the final stop for so many Coloradans who became hooked on painkillers following major injury, nerve damage, surgery or cancer treatment.

It’s also the final stop for many young people who consume it unintentionally. Fentanyl, easy to manufacture and distribute, is increasingly added to a wide range of other substances for the express purpose of increasing potency and generating addiction.

Unfortunately, efforts to criminalize addicts and unknowing users does little to address the tragedies of overdose and unintended ingestion.

The sponsors of the bill, a handful of legislators, and the governor himself, seem determined to repeat the failures of the past. But if harsh criminal penalties don’t curb the death and destruction wrought by drugs, what can we expect this new bill, if passed, to do?

We can expect more victims of the opioid crisis to spend more time in prisons, fewer opportunities for employment for the affected population, and more children to enter the foster care system. From 2011 to 2018, as drug abuse rates increased in Colorado, the state’s struggling child welfare system saw a 16% increase in infants entering foster care. Three rural counties had increases above 50%. Incarcerating more people will send this soaring further upward.

Additionally, racial discrepancies in the enforcement of drug laws have been the hallmark of the war on drugs since its inception. Drug courts in particular are prone to wildly different outcomes on racial lines; research published in the American Journal of Public Health found “significant disparities” in prison and diversion for Black and Hispanic people relative to white people. We can expect that the negative impacts of this new law, including the ostensible desire to divert people to treatment, will also be disproportionate.

Ironically, in Colorado, any shift toward greater law enforcement as a “solution” for the opioid health crisis likely also means less funding for services that actually benefit Coloradans. As Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno and Sen. Chris Hansen have noted, Colorado’s unique budget limitations mean that more spending in one area requires cuts elsewhere. The high costs of waging a new war on drugs may lead, in coming years, to a shift of billions of state dollars toward prisons and increased law enforcement expenditures, and away from funding targets that could have an impact on addiction, such as housing, schools and social services.

Effectively addressing the opioid crisis must start with an accurate understanding of the nature of the epidemic. Lax governmental oversight and drug corporations’ greed gave rise to the current wave of opioid addiction, and with it, the spike in overdose deaths, increased rates of poverty and homelessness, and communities torn apart. People are suffering and dying because social supports are scarce and state systems can’t meet the demand for treatment. While this bill provides avenues for treatment, it requires a person to first go through the criminal system to receive it, leaving desperate patients risking potential loss of liberty for the mere chance to receive treatment. The opioid epidemic must be treated as the health and social crisis that it is. It requires creative problem solving and medical treatment, not criminalization of victims.

HB 1326 is worse than a band-aid fix. This wrong-minded focus on crime and punishment compounds tragedy by handing the reins to cops over doctors and prosecutors over patients. This is a road we’ve been down before. It had tragic results for its first 40 years and should not be repeated.

Ellen Giarratana is the managing attorney at Colorado Center on Law and Policy, a nonprofit organization standing with diverse communities across Colorado in the fight against poverty through research, legislation and legal advocacy.