After voting down a bill last month to keep drug possession illegal and boost services for people struggling with addiction, Washington lawmakers are entering a special legislative session to find a compromise before a temporary law keeping the possession of small amounts of drugs outlawed expires.
If a new law is not passed, Washington would become the second state in the U.S., after Oregon, to decriminalize possession of personal-use amounts of drugs, even as widely available and cheap fentanyl worsens an opioid crisis defined by open drug use and soaring overdose deaths.
