Senate Bill 44 has been introduced by Senators Tom Umberg and Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh in the 2023 session to implement a fentanyl admonishment in California on the statewide level. The measure will mandate that people who are convicted or charged with various drug offenses be read the following admonishment by a court:
“You are hereby advised that all drugs and counterfeit pills are dangerous to human life and become even deadlier because they are often, sometimes unknowingly, mixed with substances such as fentanyl and analogs of fentanyl. People can and have died from these substances, even in very small doses. It is extremely dangerous and deadly to human life to sell, furnish, administer, or give away any drugs, in any form, including real or counterfeit pills. If you do so in the future, and a person dies as a result of that action, you may be charged with a homicide, up to and including the crime of murder, within the meaning of Penal Code Section 187.”
As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a career lawyer and prosecutor, and a veteran, Senator Umberg has dedicated his life to the equal pursuit of justice for all. He believes there is no justice in allowing willful negligence by drug dealers or a lack of action on the part of the Legislature to result in murder and a continually escalating death toll caused by fentanyl poisonings. There is an unequal application of justice too, in cases where a drug dealer can be prosecuted in one county, but not in another when drug sales and people regularly cross jurisdictions.
Taken as a piece of numerous reforms to battle this crisis, SB 44 will implement a tempered approach to fentanyl poisonings that first warns and then punishes drug dealers who traffic in fentanyl in a manner that results in death. By using education and a measured approach that abides the will of California’s voters, we will be able to hold people accountable when they knowingly and willfully cause the death of others.
Read the full text of the bill here or download our fact sheet.
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