The Idaho State Capitol rotunda is pictured in this Jan. 23, 2024, photo. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
Every parent raises a child knowing they will make mistakes. We hope our kids learn and do better. But imagine your teenager or a young adult at a party and sharing illegal drugs. It might be one of the worst mistakes of their short life, but the mistake is compounded when someone at the party dies. Now, your child faces up to a life sentence in prison. That’s a provision in Idaho’s House Bill 406 , called Drug Induced Homicide, or DIH, prosecuting drug-related deaths as criminal killings.
As “the last safe space for the American dream,” Idaho is where out-of-state folks are moving because we uphold traditional values, and we have laws that put violent and career criminals behind bars. I’m a lifetime Idahoan who spent more than 30 years as an Ada County deputy prosecutor, and I know a thing or two about taking real criminals off our streets.
Prosecutors and law enforcement depend on well-written laws to keep Idahoans safe, but someone dropped the ball when they wrote the DIH provision in House Bill 406. It’s an emotional, knee-jerk reaction to a problem killing tens of thousands of Americans every year : synthetic opioid drugs like fentanyl are the deadliest drugs our state or nation has ever seen.