A panel of House lawmakers unanimously approved legislation to regulate the sale of sodium nitrite, which is increasingly being used in Colorado and elsewhere for suicide.

Colorado’s lawmakers have increasingly turned their attention to suicide, which killed 49,449 in the United States in 2022, an increase of 2.6% from the previous year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Colorado came in with the sixth highest suicide rate in the country that year, reaching 1,384 deaths, a trend that has persisted for a decade. Since 2014, Colorado has been in the Top 10 states for highest suicide rates every year except in 2017.

The legislation would prohibit the sale and transfer of products containing sodium nitrite – a chemical compound used as a food additive and preservative in small concentrations – in a concentration greater than 10%. 

Sponsored by Rep. Judy Amabile, D-Boulder, and Rep. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose, and senators Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, and Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee approved House Bill 1081 after hearing testimony from lawyers, mental health professionals, a county coroner, and family members affected by suicide.

Nobody testified against the bill.

Former Fifth Judicial District Attorney Bruce Brown, who lost his 17-year-old son Bennett to suicide by sodium nitrite, said that he suffered from “long COVID” and had a hard time with the social isolation caused by the pandemic. 

“On the internet, he was encouraged to take a poison that could ease the pain,” Brown said. “So, he ordered sodium nitrite from an out-of-state sportsman’s supply store for $13.99, which included two-day shipping.”

“Now, who needs a food-curing agent shipped expeditiously? The store knew what he was likely using this product for. Bennett cancelled his order once, and you know what the retailer did? Told him he left something in his cart. So he finalized his order,” Brown said. 

After taking the substance, Bennett cried out for help, but he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Brown said.  

Brown said he hired an investigator to visit the store, where Bennett purchased the sodium nitrite. According to the investigator, the owner was aware that people were buying the product to commit suicide, but that it wasn’t his problem. 

“After grief-filled months, I wondered, ‘What if we could prevent this post-suicide suffering for other families who otherwise might lose a loved one to sodium nitrite?'” Brown said.

He began to conduct research and contacted medical professionals and elected officials, he said, adding he was surprised to find that hardly anyone he spoke with had heard of sodium nitrite, except for coroners, who had been seeing a rise in deaths related to the substance in recent years. 

Dr. Annette Cannon, the Jefferson County coroner who testified in favor of the bill, said her county has seen at least one suicide by sodium nitrite every year since 2021. The youngest death was a 17-year-old. 

“This is a commonsense bill, and it’s long overdue,” she said. “As public stewards, whatever we can do to address mental health issues will have a beneficial impact on reducing premature death, including suicide.” 

Similar legislation has been introduced in New York and California.

From their offices in New York, lawyers Carrie Goldberg and Naomi Leeds of C.A. Goldberg talked to the lawmakers during the hearing about their five lawsuits against Amazon. 

Including a federal case they’re appealing, C.A. Goldberg has a total of five lawsuits for twelve families.  In three of the cases, all filed in Washington State Court, the judges ruled for the parents’ claims to proceed. One case has yet to be heard.

“We’re not talking about obscure websites here. We’re talking about sports supply stores and Amazon,” Goldberg told the legislative panel. “I went to the webpage for the product, Amazon was still selling it, and it was user review after user review saying, ‘This product killed my nephew’, ‘Take this off the shelves, this killed my son.'”

“I was shocked that Amazon was still selling it,” Goldberg said.

“It takes one teaspoon of this odorless powder that looks like salt, mixed with a glass of water and chugged like a shot, to kill somebody within 20 minutes,” Goldberg added. “This is the most lethal poison that you can imagine, and the only antidote is one that’s very obscure and no emergency response vehicle carries it.”

“Let Colorado set the standard that we will not tolerate this conduct from our sellers,” added her colleague, Leeds. “Doing so with this comprehensive bill sets the gold standard. We don’t let sellers play God, and this bill makes that very clear by putting the liability where it belongs – on the sellers.” 

In siding with Amazon, the federal district court judge said the plaintiffs failed to establish the following – that the sodium nitrite sold was defective, that the company had a duty to provide additional warnings about its dangers, or that the alleged failure to provide the warnings was the “proximate cause” of the teenagers’ deaths. The judge said there were clear implications the teenagers were well aware of the dangers of ingesting sodium nitrite and bought them “because of those known and obvious dangers.”

The final testimony came from Suzanne, Peter and Quinn Frankovsky, a family from Erie who lost their son and brother Sam to suicide by sodium nitrite.

“He was smart, and he had a plan,” Peter Frankovsky said of Sam, who interned for Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and was pursuing a Master’s Degree in public policy. “But this substance was too easy, too much of a convenience, and had promises.” 

Quinn Frankovsky spoke of the effect his brother’s death has had on his family: “It has felt like we are living new lives; as if our home has figuratively burned down.”

“But it is the duty of the burden to not stand idly by watching this figurative fire burn down the houses and lives of our brothers and sisters. It is our civic and moral duty to extinguish this gross product from our community,” Quinn Frankovsky said.  

Catlin said that, once in a while, lawmakers run into “something we can do.”

“And we can do it today,” Catlin said. “I think this bill is one of those things. This is something the state of Colorado can be a leader in. Colorado has always enjoyed a leadership position in numerous things. This is one of those bills that can make a big difference in somebody’s life that you may know already.”

The bill will now move to the House Committee of the Whole.