Tucson drafts new law to criminalize public drug use; goal is to get offenders into treatment

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As the Tucson City Council weighs whether to target public drug use through a new pathway to misdemeanor arrests, a rare city-county summit highlighted a central dilemma; how to address addiction as both a growing public health emergency and a political flashpoint.

The meeting showed the depth of planning and resources around this issue, and how frequently police enforcement ends up as the most consistently available tool.

That’s the tool Tucson has turned to in a new ordinance under consideration by Tucson City Council that would allow police to arrest people suspected of using drugs in public.

People standing in areas suspected to be used for taking drugs or someone who raises a “reasonable suspicion that they are about to engage” in public drug use could all be subject to being arrested, fined and booked into jail under the proposed new misdemeanor law.

“There has to be some level of accountability for individuals (who) many times have been arrested five, six, or eight times,” Mayor Regina Romero said during Tuesday’s city council study session when members reviewed a draft ordinance. “This is a tool for the city of Tucson, for our police department, to be able to leverage arrest to move those people into treatment.”

But advocates say the ordinance is cause for alarm and a return to the misguided policies of the drug war that use police and the criminal justice system to address a public health issue.

“We have known for decades that addiction is a medical condition — a treatable brain disorder — not a character flaw or a form of social deviance. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting that position, drug addiction continues to be criminalized,” wrote Caroline Isaacs from Just Communities Arizona in a September memo to the mayor and city council. “Why do we continue to think we can punish addiction out of people?”

Possession of controlled substances is currently a felony, which means that while Tucson police can arrest a person, it’s up to the Pima County Attorney’s Office to prosecute the case through the courts.

City officials say that doesn’t happen often enough, and a misdemeanor option would move people through city of Tucson courts instead. The conversation was prompted by council member Nikki Lee in September. On Tuesday, the council discussed the text of a written ordinance for the first time.

The move comes as the Trump administration has championed involuntary addiction and mental health treatment for people who are homeless and California has moved to allow the involuntary treatment of people with severe mental health conditions. Both policies have raised alarm among community advocates for people who are unhoused or impacted by addiction.

Lee, who introduced the measure Tuesday, said currently about 65% of felony possession cases brought by Tucson police were not being prosecuted in county courts.

While the ordinance has been drafted, Lee said, there was still hope they could come to an agreement with county officials to address arrests through the court.

If not, she said, the other path is to vote on the ordinance in 60 days. That means the new members of the city council elected this fall would consider the ordinance.

Most city officials who spoke on Tuesday said they were in favor of the ordinance, and commended Lee’s work. Still, they saw possible unintended consequences, including an additional strain on Tucson city courts and that discouraging people from congregating at bus stops or parks could shift people into alleyways.

“I don’t have a solution for that,” council member Kevin Dahl said.

Romero said after the meeting she did have some concerns about how police officers “are going to interpret the ordinance.”

“We don’t want this to be a path to incarceration,” she told Arizona Luminaria.

She added that she wasn’t tied to any language in the draft ordinance, and it could still be finessed or changed. Her goal is “getting people into treatment,” she said.

Opponents of any further criminalization of people with substance addictions put forward a different vision for addressing public drug use they say stems from a harm-reduction approach: make a list of addiction programs, assess gaps or barriers such as insurance and waiting lists and determine the cost to expand treatment.

“Until we actually reckon with a real accounting of what services are available to whom and when and under what circumstances and what the gaps are, all of this other stuff is a fruitless exercise,” Isaacs said. “If Mayor/Council truly want ‘alternatives to jail,’ they have to ensure that those alternatives actually exist and are accessible to the people who need them.”

Liz Casey, a mutual aid organizer with Community Care Tucson, said the ordinance was an unprecedented attack on people with substance abuse disorders and reminiscent of the war on drugs. “The further criminalization and dehumanization instead of voluntary treatment for people who use drugs will only serve to increase the root causes of homelessness and drug use,” Casey told Arizona Luminaria.

Following the discussion on the ordinance Tuesday, the mayor and Tucson City Council attended their first joint meeting with the Pima County Board of Supervisors in years.

Homelessness and the drug-related public health crisis was the only topic on the agenda, and both bodies showed the significant amount of policy time, brainstorming and money that went into addressing these topics — but also their varying approaches.

Deputy county administrator Steve Holmes spoke about the money spent by the county to fund future affordable housing, prevent homelessness through investment in eviction legal support, and stop overdoses in the jail. Pima County’s Transition Center, which has been operating since June 2023, connects people to emergency services and mental health treatment centers.

“If we are looking at incarceration, we don’t want people to die in our hands,” Holmes said.

Tucson officials spoke about their outreach services for housing, how they’ve been addressing encampments, and the targeted efforts to address violence in certain parts of the city.

They also spoke about ongoing pressure to address the barrage of complaints they receive, often daily, about public drug use and homelessness. At the same time, they are struggling to fill funding gaps they say should be a regional responsibility.

In recent weeks, the mayor’s office launched its Safe City Initiative that brings all of the city’s enforcement-related work together. The first meeting of the Safe City Task Force, a group of community leaders brought together to develop ways to address these overlapping issues, took place on Nov. 14.

“There seems to be a real nexus of some of these tough issues: the rising unsheltered homelessness, the increase of substance use and mental health challenges, limited treatment and shelter options,” assistant city manager Liz Morales said. “This work is to bring it all under one umbrella, be better coordinated, to be looking at what is working and of course change those things that are not.”

On how to address the public health crisis of addiction, both city and county officials were direct about the challenges: insurance won’t always cover beds in rehab units, or lapses in coverage may cause a delay, pushing someone in need away from services. A lack of bilingual staff can also keep non-English speaking patients from engaging.

But where to draw the line about how to use law enforcement as a tool? The joint meeting did not resolve questions about concrete answers.

“It’s so challenging because it’s our justice system and our law enforcement system that’s being called to action to address a health crisis,” council member Karin Uhlich said. “If I have cancer or kidney disease, no one would be carting me off to jail, but if I have mental illness or addiction, guess what, there are huge gaps in our mental health system.”

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John Washington contributed reporting.

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This story was originally published by Arizona Luminaria and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.