Arizona Democrat House candidate Amish Shah’s record is coming back to haunt him — especially when it comes to the opioid crisis.
Shah, who served three terms in the Arizona House before winning the July primary race for the state’s first Congressional District, voted against a bill that would have increased punishment for those who sell deadly fentanyl.
The Ashley Dunn Act imposes enhanced prison sentences for those caught selling at least 200 grams of fentanyl, the equivalent of about 2,000 pills. A first offense carries a minimum sentence of five years and maximum of 15 years. Repeat offenders can face 10 to 20 years in prison.
The legislation was named after Ashley Dunn of Prescott, who died of an overdose in May 2021 after consuming half of a counterfeit Percocet pill that was laced with fentanyl.
Ashley Dunn died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021, along with 2,015 others in Arizona, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Last year, 1,658 Arizonans died from an overdose involving the synthetic opioid, which the Center for Disease Prevention and Control says is 50-100 times more powerful than morphine. More than 3,000 suffered non-fatal overdoses in the same year.
The deaths in Arizona reflect a nationwide crisis. More than 56,000 Americans died overdosing on fentanyl and other synthetic opioids in 2020, the CDC reported, and the numbers continue to rise. Sheriffs from both Yavapai and Pinal Counties testified that Arizona is often the first stop in the drug’s journey through the country.
“Arizona is the funnel,” Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said. “Nearly half of all drugs that come into America come through Arizona.
Lamb said users often don’t know that what they’re taking has fentanyl in it, but the dealers “know this is poison.”
✅FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE✅
— Arizona House Republicans (@AZHouseGOP) April 2, 2024
Arizona Enacts ‘Ashley Dunn Act’: Representative @QuangNguyenAZ’s #HB2245 to Combat Fentanyl Crisis
“After three years of work, I’m incredibly proud to finally have the Ashley Dunn Act become law. More than half the fentanyl seized in the United States… pic.twitter.com/9bTXJwTZUM
As Lamb suggested, many of those who perish from fentanyl overdoses were not aware they were consuming the substance in the first place. This is because the opioid is typically laced into common street drugs to heighten their addictive nature.
BREAKING (ARIZONA): NEW LAW INCREASES TIME FOR #FENTANYL DEALERS
— United Against Fentanyl (United AF) (@UAFentanyl) April 4, 2024
House Bill 2245, the Ashley Dunn Act, toughens penalties for dealers and traffickers of the synthetic opioid that has led to thousands of overdoses in recent years.#UnitedAgainstFentanylhttps://t.co/DEYrHakimB
Shah opposed an earlier 2023 version of the law that would have created a “drug trafficking homicide” charge that would carry similar sentences to first-degree murder. The state lawmaker argued against treating these deaths as murder instead of a lesser offense.
“It falls honestly closer to the definition of manslaughter because it’s reckless…” he said.
The 2024 version of the law passed after Shah had already resigned. Gov. Katie Hobbs signed it into law shortly after.
RNC spokesman Nick Poche slammed Shah’s record on the issue. "When Arizona families were dying in the thousands, Amish Shah stood with the drug dealers,” he said in a statement. “Shah is a far-left extremist who will always rabidly place his sick ideology ahead of children and families."
The most recent polling shows Shah and his opponent, Republican Jay Feely in a statistical dead heat.
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