A Colorado Democrat is being blamed for her city’s rise in fentanyl overdoses over a law she introduced in 2019.
Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-CO) introduced a law when she was in a State House that lowered the penalty for fentanyl possession in Colorado. As a result, the city of Denver has seen an unprecedented number of deaths from the deadly Chinese-produced drug that is being brought into the U.S. illegally through the southern border.
According to data, 597 people died in 2023 from a drug overdose in Denver— nearly 400 of those deaths were from fentanyl. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported that nearly 2,000 people died of a drug overdose in 2023, with 1,097 of those deaths involving fentanyl.
In just two years after Caraveo’s law passed in the state, fentanyl overdose deaths in Colorado doubled-- and that number is not slowing down. As a result, Caraveo’s law was reversed. However, the situation has gotten so bad that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and Colorado law enforcement were forced to issue warnings of increased fentanyl threats in the state.
During her 2022 camping, Caraveo tried to save face and reverse course on the radical stance she took that led to mass overdoses.
She said that she voted for the bill because she felt the state needed "a different approach with fentanyl" that directly targets drug dealers after seeing a spike in deaths from the deadly drug.
Caraveo has done nothing to help the situation. However, she has praised the state’s declaration of racism as a public health crisis.
“Extreme Democrat Yadira Caraveo needs to take ownership of her role in Colorado’s fentanyl crisis and apologize for the heartbreak it has brought to Colorado communities. Shame on Caraveo for siding with drug cartels over her own suffering constituents,” NRCC Spokeswoman Delanie Bomar said in a statement.
On the contrary, Caraveo’s Republican opponent Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer (R-CO) voted against the bill, calling for any amount of fentanyl to be a felony.