On Monday, the Spokane City Council voted to pass two ordinances creating an Alcohol Impact Area (AIA) and a Community Health Impact Area (CHIA) that were intended to work hand-in-hand to increase safety and reduce crime in downtown Spokane.
But while both ordinances passed city council unanimously (though Council President Betsy Wilkerson was absent from the vote), community advocates fear that while the AIA has data to support its effectiveness, the CHIA may result in more fatal overdoses and viral infections for drug users.
We’ve prepped a quick breakdown of the two ordinances and what they would do for downtown.
The Alcohol Impact Area
The passage of the AIA ordinance created a voluntary impact area, which means the 17 convenience stores, supermarkets and even a hotel that met the ordinance’s stated criteria — holders of “off-premises liquor licensees selling single-serve containers and/or selling liquor between the hours of 12:00am and 2:00am,” operating within the boundaries of the downtown Spokane Police Department precinct — have been asked to stop selling single-serve alcohol at all hours and stop selling liquor between 12 am and 2 am (state laws prevent the sale of all alcohol between 2 am and 6 am.)
It won’t be the first time Spokane had an AIA: both downtown and East Central had their own AIAs until 2022, but they were “inadvertently repealed by the previous administration and City Council in Emergency Ordinance C36289,” according to Adam McDaniel, Mayor Lisa Brown’s policy advisor. Since the downtown AIA was repealed, crime in the area has gone down but alcohol-related incidents in the area have gone up 64% over the last three years, according to data from the Spokane Police Department.
Because this is currently just a voluntary area, there is no enforcement mechanism listed in the law’s text, but it does warn if crime in the area doesn’t fall, Spokane will ask the state to officially recognize the AIA, making it mandatory and enforceable.
While Mayor Lisa Brown highlighted beverages with a high alcohol by volume (ABV) in her announcement of the ordinance, the actual text of the ordinance states the impacted business as those “selling single-serve containers and/or selling liquor,” with no mention of ABV. (City spokesperson Erin Hut confirmed the ordinance restricts all “single serve, off premise consumption alcohol.”)
And if Brown were to push the state for the mandatory guidelines, the list of single-serve alcoholic beverages banned in the AIA would, by law, include “a prohibition on the sale of single-serve containers,” with the full list of banned products including many that fall under 8% ABV.
Most of the public comments on the ordinance during Monday’s city council meeting were in favor of establishing the AIA, calling it an evidence-based approach to downtown public safety, since data from the first time the city had AIAs showed lower crime rates and steady liquor sales for businesses.
Though council conservatives Jonathan Bingle and Michael Cathcart both expressed concerns with limiting the free market, the council voted 6-0 in favor of it. “We are out of options,” Cathcart said, adding that he hadn’t heard any complaints from constituents the first time the AIA was in effect.
City spokesperson Erin Hut said the voluntary AIA period would last at least six months before they decide if they want to ask the state to make it mandatory.
The Community Health Impact Area
The CHIA ordinance passed by council prohibited businesses from selling “smoking paraphernalia,” like glass pipes or single sheets of tin foil within the boundaries of the downtown precinct, unless they provided free naloxone — commonly referred to as Narcan — with every transaction.
The law has carve-outs for the grocery stores within the CHIA to continue selling rolls of foil and for dispensaries to sell pipes and bongs. Council members called the selling of smoking paraphernalia, specifically glass pipes and single sheets of foil “predatory,” which is what they want to crack down on.
It’s a uniquely Spokane fix for the city’s “worst overdose rate on record,” according to McDaniel. While the AIA that passed was supported by a veritable treasure trove of efficacy data, there wasn’t as much to support the creation of the CHIA, likely because no other jurisdictions have passed a law that acts like this.
While the ordinance technically permits business owners to continue selling the paraphernalia as long as they’re providing free naloxone, critics of the policy at council pointed out that naloxone can cost up to $35 a dose, which makes the sale of a $5 glass pipe a net loss for business owners. Instead of saturating the streets with Narcan, it could just result in drug users having no access to clean smoking supplies, which leads to higher risk drug use.
Kaitlyn Costanza, a member of the Health Equity Circle’s Harm Reduction Action Team — a local group comprised of current med school students and alumni — testified against the CHIA, stating that while the AIA will likely be effective because it “takes away the supply,” of the substance causing issues, the CHIA just removes safe methods of smoking, not the substance itself.
In an interview with RANGE, Costanza said limiting the sale of glass pipes is “naive,” because drug users “are just going to resort to more dangerous ways of consuming these substances.”
Costanza said that if the city was actually interested in harm reduction, they would distribute, or push regional agencies like the Spokane Regional Health Department (SRHD), to distribute safe, clean smoking kits.
Hut told RANGE the city was “in communication,” with both SRHD and the state Department of Health about safe smoking distribution plans.
“This is not a solution,” Council Member Lili Navarrete said, of the CHIA ordinance, “It's just a band-aid for a bigger problem.” The ordinance passed unanimously.
