harm reduction
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‘Life over abstinence’: Colorado legislators again pursue supervised drug use centers
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When Maggie Seldeen’s mother died from a heroin overdose, no one called 911. At only 15 years old, overdoses were almost commonplace in Seldeen’s world, surrounded by addiction, drug dealing and domestic violence in the Roaring Fork Valley. Seldeen, an injection drug user herself at the time, did not know about naloxone, or Narcan, which…
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Colorado gets $18 million in opioid settlement money
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Colorado will receive $18 million in opioid settlement money, Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Thursday. Nineteen regions in Colorado will split the $18 million, while Denver will get $4.7 million. Denver Labor team returns over $1 million to underpaid workers Denver plans to use the money in three areas: Prevention, treatment and infrastructure, according to…
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Colorado Senate passes fentanyl bill, sets felony threshold at 1 gram
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The Senate Friday, on bipartisan lines, approved a sweeping measure that seeks to confront Colorado’s fentanyl crisis by making it a felony to possess 1 gram of an illicit substance that contains the deadly drug. The full Senate approved House Bill 1326 on a 24-8 vote, a day after the chamber decided that prosecutors shouldn’t have…
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Senate advances fentanyl bill, adopts law enforcement’s key request on felony language
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The Colorado legislature’s struggle on how to deal with fentanyl possession took another turn Thursday, when the state Senate decided that prosecutors shouldn’t have to prove that users knowingly possessed the drug in order to charge them with a felony. The revision is the most significant and far-reaching change to come out of the Senate’s work…
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Advocates diametrically disagree on imprisonment’s role in response to fentanyl crisis
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Fighting through tears, Jessica Chavez recounted before a panel of Colorado lawmakers how her daughter, Yesenia, fatally overdosed in July after taking a fentanyl pill she thought was Percocet. Before her death, Yesi, as her friends called her, had texted her family’s pastor, Chavez told lawmakers. The 21-year-old told him that she wanted “to do…
