Longview council to vote on child endangerment fentanyl law Tuesday
The Longview City Council plans to vote next week on a draft ordinance making it a crime within city limits for adults to expose juveniles to dangerous narcotics that include fentanyl.
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The proposed ordinance, drafted by the city attorney's office after direction from the council earlier this spring, proposes to make it a gross misdemeanor to expose children to Schedule I and II controlled substances, categories that include the highly concentrated synthetic opioid. The council will deliberate during Tuesday's City Council meeting.
The Longview ordinance is intended to address limitations in state law regarding the crime of "Endangerment with a controlled substance." Although that crime is a felony, it currently only applies to children being exposed to methamphetamine and the substances used in homegrown meth labs such as pseudoephedrine and anhydrous ammonia.
State legislators in both houses - including local legislators - have thus far been unsuccessful changing the law.
State Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, has cosponsored legislation since 2023 seeking to expand the controlled substances covered in the endangerment law, but the drafts never got out of committee.
State representatives Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, and Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, introduced their own bill in the house during the 2025 session and reintroduced in 2026, but it also never left committee.
Meanwhile, other cities and counties in Washington have passed ordinances similar to the Longview proposal. Pierce County and the city of Gig Harbor passed a misdemeanor endangerment ordinance in 2024, and the city of Everett passed one in March.
Mother since sentenced in infant's fentanyl death
Efforts toward a Longview fentanyl ordinance began earlier this spring, following the first-degree manslaughter arrest of 33-year-old Lashaia Shanmarie-Amy Avila in the drug related death of her infant son.
The child died in December 2025, but Avila was arrested March 30 after results of an autopsy and toxicology report determined that the 3-month-old baby boy had died of "acute fentanyl intoxication," according to an earlier news report.
At the time of Avila's arrest, police estimated the amount of fentanyl in the child's system was 20 times an amount that could kill an adult.
Avila ultimately pleaded down to a lesser manslaughter charge in the child's death in May. As terms of a negotiated plea deal, Avila was sentenced to six years in prison, 12 years of community custody and was ordered to undergo substance abuse evaluation and treatment.
As of Wednesday, Washington State Department of Corrections records show that Avila is currently an inmate at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Rosedale.
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