(The Center Square) – Lisa Daugaard, co-creator of a Seattle drug diversion program replicated across the country, said telling a child using fentanyl to leave home would not be her strategy during a Seattle fundraising event on Friday.
Daugaard, co-executive director of the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Support Bureau and co-creator of the program, took part in a panel discussion about Seattle’s drug and housing crisis during the We Heart Seattle “friendraiser” at Art Love Salon on Union Street.
During the discussion, Daugaard was asked by an audience member how she would handle having a child who was a drug addict and potentially using fentanyl in her home.
“In my experience as a parent, telling my kid what to do was not the most effective way to engineer…. telling a kid what to do or telling them they have to leave my house would not be my strategy,” said Daugaard.
That response drew criticism from participants and audience members.
“Her answer gave me insight into the cornerstone of the problem in Washington State,” said Art Dahlen, recovery advocate and founder of Battlefield Addiction, in a Monday interview with The Center Square recounting his question to Daugaard.
The panel
There were two panelists who support the “housing first” approach in the panel discussion, one of them being Daugaard and the other being political consultant Sandeep Kaushik.
The two “recovery first” panelists were Tom Wolf, a recovery advocate from San Francisco who is himself an addict in recovery, and Eric Zimmerman, the mayor of Normandy Park, who heads up Washington Policy Center’s Public Safety Solutions Policy Center. WPC is a free-market think tank.
As reported by The Center Square, WPC’s Zimmerman recently produced analysis revealing that 11 years of claims by LEAD backers related to reduced recidivism and arrest rates were based on inaccurate numbers that were repeated over and over again as evidence of the success of the program.
“The Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion arrest diversion program is a collaborative community safety effort that offers law enforcement a credible alternative to booking people into jail for criminal activity that stems from unmet behavioral health needs or poverty,” according to the King County website.
The program costs Washington taxpayers about $13.5 million a year via funding from Seattle, King County and the state, budget analysis shows.
The program has been replicated across the country based on those statistics of success, which Daugaard previously indicated had been reported and used incorrectly.
We Heart Seattle founder Andrea Suarez blames the LEAD program for exacerbating the local drug crisis, but has been open to conversations with those who believe in the approach, hoping to find common ground and change policy in the city and at the state level.
As Friday’s event was a fundraiser for We Heart Seattle, which soundly rejects housing first, the audience was filled with mostly supporters of the recovery first approach.
During the panel, Dahlen asked Daugaard about a hypothetical scenario.
“I asked Lisa, if she was a parent or if she had a child who was in her basement smoking fentanyl, how would she approach that situation, and would that child’s housing be contingent upon remaining sober,” said Dahlen.
That was when Daugaard gave her answer, which generated audible gasps and groans from the audience.
“She believes that housing shouldn’t be contingent upon sobriety. And I have respect for that viewpoint, but on the other hand, I’ve never seen that really come to flourish and be successful,” Dahlen told The Center Square Monday.
He shared that in his own active addiction, the only thing that mattered was the next high.
“A good warm dumpster for me to use drugs in all day was preferable to a cruise ship where I couldn’t use drugs. I’m looking for a secluded place to isolate and use drugs. That is the entire goal,” Dahlen said.
Suarez told The Center Square, Daugaard’s response to say she would let her own child use fentanyl in her home illustrates the “failed” LEAD approach.
“Lisa’s answer about her own child – don’t take the house away for smoking fentanyl, just keep coaching – is exactly the standard LEAD has applied to other people’s loved ones on the public dime for over a decade,” wrote Suarez via text.
“Average voters don’t realize this often means free housing and continued use with minimal accountability.”
Zimmerman with WPC also reacted to Daugaard’s response.
“It’s dishonest to say, ‘We can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do.’ Society makes people do things every day: pay taxes, serve on juries, stop at red lights, go to school, and we force treatment for diseases like tuberculosis.”
“We penalize not doing these things. Exempting drug-use from accountability is an anti-police trojan horse. When we forget why rules matter, people die – and cultural communities like Seattle’s Little Saigon do too,” wrote Zimmerman via email on Monday.
The Center Square reached back out to Daugaard to see if she had any regret about the way she responded to the question, or thoughts about the audience reaction and subsequent criticism, but did not receive a response before publication.