How Pa.’s attorney general candidates plan to approach the opioid epidemic

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. Sign up for our free newsletters.

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s next attorney general will set the tone of the commonwealth’s approach to law enforcement, and one of their biggest tasks will be deciding how to handle the ongoing opioid crisis.

Under now-Gov. Josh Shapiro, the attorney general’s office represented Pennsylvanians in multistate settlements against drug companies that were accused of driving widespread use of opioids. And the office cooperates with federal and local authorities to go after street dealers, pharmacists, and doctors who unlawfully distribute drugs.

But within that mandate, the attorney general has a lot of discretion.

Both major party candidates, Democrat Eugene DePasquale and Republican Dave Sunday, argue harm reduction should be part of the commonwealth’s approach to the opioid crisis, and have focused on getting people who use drugs into treatment rather than prison.

DePasquale’s drug plan emphasizes the attorney general’s ability to push for policy shifts, such as how the state uses opioid settlement dollars. Sunday, on the other hand, has stressed the office’s role as a prosecutor and said he’ll crack down on dealers.

According to CDC data, Pennsylvania’s rate of death due to opioids peaked in 2017, at third in the nation with 44.3 deaths per 100,000 people. It has since declined to 14th in the country as of 2022, with 40.9 deaths per 100,000.

Still, the toll is high — 5,000-plus Pennsylvanians died from an overdose in 2022 (the most recent year full data are available for), while synthetic drugs like fentanyl have made overdoses more lethal.

The next attorney general may also have to weigh in on future legal battles with drug manufacturers and distributors. Settlements in these cases can bring states hundreds of millions of dollars for public health and safety, and the attorney general can play a key role in negotiating these settlements.

Shapiro’s role in brokering a national 2021 settlement with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three drug distributors, for instance, was contentious; county district attorneys have argued he should have pushed for more money.

What is Eugene DePasquale’s plan to tackle the opioid crisis?

In public remarks, DePasquale has emphasized that firsthand experience shapes his approach to opioid addiction.

“I know what the consequences to families are. First, someone can lose their life. Second, someone can be incarcerated,” DePasquale said during an ABC 27 debate this month.

DePasquale’s father became addicted to opioids and similar drugs after being injured in the Vietnam War. That addiction led his father to start selling drugs, for which he served 10 years in prison, DePasquale told PennLive.

The former auditor general has pushed for harm reduction policies, like the legalization of fentanyl test strips and continued state funding for free naloxone, which can reverse an overdose.

DePasquale has also backed the legalization of recreational marijuana, arguing as auditor general that it could help “prevent some people from getting addicted to prescription painkillers and entering the potentially deadly spiral of opioid addiction.”

He has focused on the efficacy of the state’s existing rehab programs too. As state auditor, DePasquale investigated drug rehabilitation centers that receive state dollars and made several recommendations for improvement, including having the state collect more data to assess rehab facilities’ results.

DePasquale campaign manager Carver Murphy said that as attorney general, DePasquale would “continue to fight for those objectives to ensure that state dollars go to the programs that are working and have high success rates.”

During the October debate, DePasquale also said he wants to make sure the state’s share of settlement dollars with drug manufacturers and distributors goes toward helping people battling addiction.

“We need to use those dollars to make sure they are directed to drug rehabilitation programs that work,” DePasquale said.

Pennsylvania expects to receive at least $1 billion through these settlements. However, the attorney general’s office does not sit on the court-ordered board that distributes the funding.

Still, “while the AG can’t force the board to act, he can certainly use his influence, values and experience to make recommendations to improve the programs it funds, as his work and life have shown him the kind of programs that don’t,” Murphy said.

Murphy added that DePasquale also supports supervised injection sites, or locations where people addicted to drugs can consume them under medical observation. Research has found that access to such locations can reduce overdose deaths and the transmission of diseases like HIV.

As attorney general and governor, Shapiro has opposed supervised injection sites. Murphy said DePasquale’s support is informed by his personal experience with his father’s addiction.

“This helps them, their families and the greater community,” Murphy said.

What is Dave Sunday’s plan to tackle the opioid crisis?

Sunday often summarizes his approach to criminal justice with two concepts: accountability and redemption.

“We fight every single day to hold drug dealers accountable, to go after drug traffickers, to go after the dealers on the street,” Sunday said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. “But at the same time we do show redemption, and we show love to people that are in the throes of addiction.”

In an interview with Spotlight PA, Sunday pointed to York County’s heroin task force as an example of his record on the issue. Co-founded by Sunday when he was a deputy prosecutor, the task force conducted dozens of community meetings, gave local police with naloxone to reduce overdose deaths, and expanded the number of treatment beds.

That task force has since become a separate public-private partnership known as the York Opioid Collaborative, which includes law enforcement, public health organizations, and community groups.

“This issue, it ties into mental health, it ties into reentry,” Sunday said. “These issues that are driving crime, it’s bigger than just drugs. It goes into childhood trauma. It goes into mental health.”

If made the state’s top prosecutor, Sunday said he’d copy this work statewide. He wants to get more counties into the Law Enforcement Treatment Initiative, which allows local district attorneys to refer people arrested for minor crimes directly to addiction treatment without facing prosecution.

So far, 29 counties have worked with the attorney general’s office to launch similar programs. York isn’t one of them, Sunday said, because the county’s diversion program preceded the attorney general’s and is “already sustainable.”

Sunday also said he wants to expand a York County program that partners with local health system WellSpan to connect people who are arrested with in-patient mental health care instead of putting them in jail. Sunday added he is already talking to UPMC about joining the program.

In his effort to hold people involved in drug trade and distribution accountable, Sunday has also made significant use of a relatively new criminal charge known as drug delivery resulting in death, or DDRD.

The felony charge can be brought against any person who “intentionally administers, dispenses, delivers, gives, prescribes, sells or distributes any controlled substance” that is used by another person who dies as a result of using the substance, the law says. If found guilty of the charge, the distributor is punishable by up to 40 years in prison.

According to data released by the state courts, York County has prosecuted 104 such charges since 2018 — Sunday’s first year as the elected district attorney. That’s tied for second largest total by a county in the commonwealth.

The charge can be controversial. Criminal justice reform advocates have warned that DDRD charges can reduce the likelihood of drug users calling for help during an overdose. Often, advocates say, the charges are brought against a friend, family member, caretaker, or romantic partner of the individual who had a fatal overdose instead of a drug dealer.

York County has used DDRD charges less in recent years. Sunday acknowledged that the charge has critics, but added he has advocated for the state’s good Samaritan law, which protects those who report overdoses.

“We are extremely cautious in charging it, but we have utilized it to take out people that have killed literally, two or three people at a time,” Sunday said. “And so we feel that it is appropriate, because there has to be accountability.”

A spokesperson for Sunday also said that he opposes supervised injection sites.

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.