April 26, 2022 11:02 AM UTC

From Major Media Outlet To Personal Vendetta Machine

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• by: Colorado Pols

A substantial portion of the 2022 session of the Colorado legislature has been dominated by debate over policy to address the particularly dangerous synthetic opioid drug fentanyl, which has been responsible for an escalating overdose and death rate for nearly a decade as this cheap and powerful drug is smuggled in large quantities into the U.S. from foreign suppliers and dangerously substituted for other less-deadly street drugs. Although the fentanyl crisis is in no way unique to Colorado, local Republicans successfully engineered a moral panic in the press over fentanyl in this state by blaming the proliferation of fentanyl on a state law passed in 2019 making simple possession of most drugs a misdemeanor.

Standing in the way of the GOP’s campaign turn fentanyl into a partisan political weapon has always been the fact that the 2019 reform was passed with bipartisan support and sponsorship. In the Colorado Senate, Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert, GOP Senators Owen Hill, Jack Tate, Don Coram, and Kevin Priola all voted in favor of the bill. But in 2022, it was Rep. Shane Sandridge of Colorado Springs who stood up to his own party to denounce the fearmongering and partisan attacks on policy he helped make law. Eerily resembling the treatment of Republican who don’t toe the party line on the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 elections, Sandridge appears to have paid for his honesty with his political career, announcing he wouldn’t run for re-election with party favorites already measuring the proverbial drapes in his office.

But it appears that even that was not enough. Over the weekend, Rep. Sandridge had some kind of confrontation with Wayne Laugesen, the controversial chair of the editorial board of the right-wing gazillionaire Phil Anschutz-owned Colorado Springs Gazette:

It’s shocking how a Colorado Springs Gazette board member requests a conversation on a Sunday evening, questionably drunk, and barks out orders then threatens to disparage me if I don’t quickly comply. Ummm, my constituents are the only people I answer to, not the local drive by media. Threaten all you want. I don’t cave to the lobbyist and I won’t cave to you.

This morning, we found out what this was about–Laugesen isn’t happy that Sandridge supports legislation this year tightening penalties for fentanyl that passed the House last Friday, but still preserving a misdemeanor charge for possession of a minimal quantity in keeping with the spirit of the 2019 law. But in today’s Colorado Springs Gazette editorial we see not just the rank falsehoods that have made debating this issue so difficult this year, but scurrilous personal attacks on Rep. Sandridge that seem as out of place in a mainstream news outlet’s editorial as Will Smith slapping Chris Rock:

Four grams can cause more than 2,000 overdose deaths, and it’s happening. Because of the Sandridge Law, Colorado has become a hub for drug dealers. They risk little and are wise to relocate here from almost anyplace else.

As we’ve explained in this space several times, the scare tactic of claiming that “a misdemeanor’s worth of fentanyl can kill thousands” is completely off base, since distribution of fentanyl is now and has always been a felony and you can’t “kill thousands” without distributing it. Also, fentanyl is almost always sold in a highly diluted form, but the total weight of the compound containing fentanyl is what counts toward the limit.

None of these facts matter to Laugesen, who has no doubt been told repeatedly how this is a gross mischaracterization of the fentanyl problem and simply chooses to keep lying about it–much like Laugesen claimed “Antifa” was responsible for the January 6th riot he was himself present for. That’s par for the course with for the Gazette, but here’s where Laugesen goes over the line:

Colorado has the country’s fastest-growing fentanyl crisis — by far —thanks mostly to Republican Shane Sandridge… [Pols emphasis]

In his conversation with The Gazette, he continued denigrating law enforcement. He said he knows more than cops and prosecutors because he went from work as an “inner-city police officer to a Ph.D. program” in criminology…

Sandridge is unfit for future public service of any type. The Gazette regrets falling for his deliberately deceptive song-and-dance about cracking down on crime. He wrote a law to escalate crime, at an ongoing cost to innocent lives.

This is horrendously inappropriate character assassination coming from a major newspaper’s editorial board, and though we’re not lawyers we have to wonder if the outrageously false claim that Colorado’s fentanyl crisis is “thanks mostly to Shane Sandridge” could be legally actionable. Fentanyl overdoses and deaths are growing all over the country, including all of our neighboring states, and including states where simple possession with no intent to distribute fentanyl is a felony.

The Colorado Springs Gazette in recent years has become a haven for far-right commentators who have managed to make themselves persona non grata with Denver media outlets (here’s looking at you, Jon Caldara). Laugesen has long pushed the boundaries of appropriateness for his often not just wrong but downright wacky editorial pieces, with no sign of displeasure from the closely-held paper’s ownership.

At some point, and maybe this is it, Laugesen could cost Phil Anschutz real money.