A spate of Gazette headlines last week illustrated yet again the price Coloradans are paying for our creeping drug culture, fostered in part by our state’s permissive drug policies.

Let’s begin with the news last Monday that a Colorado Springs woman was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for hitting and killing a 25-year-old woman while driving under the influence in Douglas County last year.

Jessica Stahl, 46, was convicted in the 18th Judicial District Court of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault while driving under the influence; child abuse; and leaving the scene of an accident causing serious bodily injury and death.

As reported by The Gazette, Lacey Lewis of Steamboat Springs and her boyfriend were crossing an intersection at a crosswalk in Parker in June 2022 when Stahl plowed her car into Lewis.

Stahl at first pulled over and even asked Lewis’ boyfriend if she had hit the woman but then returned to her vehicle for “almost 6 minutes” without calling 911 or offering assistance, according to the findings of a police investigation.

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When police arrived, Stahl took off in her vehicle and led officers on a high-speed chase before pulling over. Police found that Stahl showed “clear indications” of being under the influence of drugs and was taken to a hospital for a blood draw. Two nurses “with more than 40 years of combined experience,” police said, were unable to draw blood due to “extensive track marks” and damaged veins from heroin use.

A subsequent urinalysis showed Stahl tested positive for heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, pain relievers and suboxone, a medication that helps ease opioid withdrawal symptoms. Not surprisingly, a witness had called in to report Stahl driving erratically through a construction zone before hitting Lewis. Oh – and Stahl had her child in her car with her at the time.

Then there was a traffic stop last Wednesday in which police in Wheat Ridge pulled over a driver for failure to come to a stop and an expired temporary tag – and after searching the vehicle found a cache of deadly drugs. Police seized about 3,500 fentanyl pills, 16 grams of methamphetamine, 7 grams of cocaine and smaller amounts of heroin and liquid fentanyl.

A loaded .380 handgun also turned up. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl, the size of a pencil tip, can kill you; 920 people in the state died from a lethal dose of fentanyl last year.

Police later announced the suspect had been deported three times after being arrested for possession of “large amounts of drugs,” and he had two fake IDs – one from Texas and the other from Honduras.

As a footnote – and a sobering sign of our times – The Gazette also reported last week that rampant use of meth and other drugs in Goodwill thrift store fitting rooms, along with theft and vandalism, led the Colorado Springs-based nonprofit to close private dressing areas at its 42 locations statewide.

Chalk it all up to increasingly permissive drug laws – foremost, the devastating decriminalization of hard drugs by the Colorado Legislature in 2019 – and an increasingly casual attitude toward drug use.

Calling it a “victimless crime” is cruel irony. Illegal drug use not only sends many of its users to an early grave, but it also backfires on the rest of society. Too often, it even kills innocent bystanders.

Victimless? The list of victims grows by the week.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board