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Committee weighs pill thresholds for aggravated trafficking; agrees to align dosage units by statutory ratio
Summary
Prosecutors urged adding dosage-unit thresholds to aggravated-trafficking penalties to address pill mills and fentanyl-laced tablets; members debated exact numeric thresholds and agreed to use the existing statutory ratio to set dosage-unit cutoffs for aggravated trafficking.
Prosecutor representatives told the committee that aggravated trafficking statutes include weight thresholds but omit dosage-unit (pill) equivalents, which creates enforcement gaps given the rise in pills containing fentanyl and other substances. "Pills are considered a dosage unit... and the crime lab tests the pills to see what's in them, and each pill is considered a dosage unit under the law," the prosecutor explained.
The bill proposed using a threshold of more than 200 dosage units for aggravated trafficking; members debated that number and proposed alternatives, including a 400-unit threshold or using the statutory ratio already used elsewhere in trafficking law. A motion was adopted to amend the bill so the aggravated-trafficking dosage-unit threshold would follow the established ratio in existing law rather than fix a single numeric cutoff in committee.
