At least nine Puget Sound mayors will gather in Kent on Oct. 8 for a community conversation on Washington’s fentanyl crisis, and the man bringing them together wants families who’ve lost someone to the streets to ask them one question.
“How does fentanyl end in our state?” Art Dahlen, founder of the nonprofit Battlefield Addiction, said on KIRO Newsradio’s “Seattle’s Morning News” on Tuesday.
The mayors, joined by state legislators and other elected officials from across the region, will meet at the Kent-Meridian High School Performing Arts Center. Battlefield Addiction is calling the free event “Enough is Enough,” and it’s asking Gov. Bob Ferguson to lead a shift in Washington drug policy: stronger penalties for fentanyl dealers, accountability for drug possession paired with diversion programs, and an end to government-funded distribution of the supplies used to smoke fentanyl. Dahlen wants the governor as a partner. The people filling the seats will be parents who’ve watched their kids disappear into addiction, and local leaders who share their frustration…