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Kids keep dying from fentanyl while the law looks the other way.
This year alone, the bodies keep coming.
Five-year-old Brentlee Lawrence was found unresponsive next to his mother in Pierce County. Acute fentanyl toxicity.
A 15-month-old boy in Bonney Lake stopped breathing in his parents’ bed, drug paraphernalia scattered around him. He died days later from the same poison.
An 11-month-old in Seattle had chronic fentanyl exposure in his system when he was found. Gone.
A 13-month-old in Everett overdosed after exposure in his own home.
Another 2-year-old in Spanaway died after swallowing pills that belonged to her father.
These are not distant tragedies. These are Washington children who never got to grow up.
The numbers match the stories.
According to the state Office of the Family and Children’s Ombuds, critical incidents involving young children accidentally ingesting fentanyl jumped from just two in 2020 to 30 in 2024.
Thirty. That is a 15-fold increase in four years. Most of these kids were under 3 years old. Most of the exposures happened inside the home. Some happened in cars. Some spilled into parks and other public places where families take their children. Tiny amounts of this drug shut a toddler’s body down in minutes.
No second chance. No recovery.
Lewis County is not immune from any of this. Opioids have already claimed more than 150 lives here since 2022. I sit through the meetings with the coroner. I talk with the deputies and medics who walk into these scenes. I’m a father. I look at my own kids and wonder how any of us sleep while this keeps happening in our state.
State law already makes it illegal to expose a child to methamphetamine. That same protection stops cold at opioids. Fentanyl gets a free pass.
Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, has been carrying this fight in the Senate for years. He keeps bringing bipartisan bills that pass with near-unanimous votes. Then those bills die in the Democrat-controlled House. Every single time.
Kids keep dying while Olympia plays politics with their lives.
Lewis County doesn’t have to wait for them.
Ordinance 1384 makes it a misdemeanor for any adult responsible for a child to knowingly or recklessly let that child ingest, inhale, absorb or even touch opioid drugs. Fentanyl. Heroin. Carfentanil. The whole deadly list. Legitimate prescriptions stay legal. Leaving poison where a child can reach it does not.
Ninety days in jail. A $1,000 fine. This doesn’t seem like much, but it gets people in the door to helping that child. More importantly, it forces officers to call Child Protective Services the moment they make an arrest. That paper trail can pull the next child out of a deadly house before it’s too late.
This isn’t about addiction or flag waving. It’s about refusing to accept dead toddlers as the cost of doing nothing. It’s about drawing a hard line that the state has refused to draw. No child in Lewis County should die because an adult left fentanyl within reach in a living room, a car or a park.
A public hearing on the ordinance will be held at 10 a.m. Aug. 25 in the Lewis County Courthouse.
If you can’t make it, email your comments to bocc@lewiscountywa.gov.
These children never got a second chance. We still have one. Use it.
Read a draft of the ordinance online at https://tinyurl.com/dva54983.
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Sean Swope is a Republican Lewis County commissioner representing District 1 , which includes Centralia and surrounding areas.
