That’s the threshold under current law, which is set to expire at the end of this legislative session. The current penalty was set as a stopgap measure after the Washington Supreme Court in 2021 issued an opinion striking down Washington’s felony drug possession law.
House passage of Senate Bill 5536 sets up talks with state Senate lawmakers, who favored a heavier criminal penalty, in the final days of the legislative session.
The Supreme Court ruling effectively invalidated decades of criminal convictions and related penalties, and in response lawmakers set up this year’s drug-penalty debate in Olympia. In 2022, lawmakers passed a bill that temporarily made drug possession a misdemeanor. Lawmakers
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