Going the wrong way: Colorado’s fentanyl deaths rise while the rest of the nation falls

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

While much of the country is finally beginning to turn the corner on fentanyl, Colorado is heading in the opposite direction. And the human cost is staggering.

Colorado’s numbers are still moving up—synthetic opioid deaths have climbed 17 percent since December 2024. Elsewhere, the trend has started to turn. Across the country, overdose deaths have dropped 26.9 percent, according to the CDC, the steepest one-year decline of the crisis and the lowest levels since 2019.

Colorado isn’t just behind. It stands apart.

A March 2026 report from the Common Sense Institute puts that gap into focus: 1,620 excess deaths.

In other words, that’s how many more Coloradans died from synthetic opioid overdoses between November 2024 and August 2025 than would have if the state had followed the national decline.

“Every avoidable human death is a tragedy,” wrote former Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen, a co-author of the report and CSI’s Public Safety Fellow. “There is no way to put a cost to a human life’s value.”

Still, policymakers try to measure impact. 

CSI uses what’s known as the Value of Statistical Life to estimate the impact, putting those deaths at roughly $18.3 billion.

Even that number falls short. It can’t measure grief. Or the families left to deal with the aftermath. Or the quiet damage that spreads through a community after a loss like that.

A Regional Pattern—and a Supply Problem

Colorado is not alone in moving the wrong direction. But it is in a very small group.

Arizona has seen synthetic opioid deaths rise 26 percent since December 2024. New Mexico is up 21 percent. Montana and South Dakota are also trending upward. That’s it. Five states, while the rest of the country improves.

The clustering is not random.

Colorado sits along a major trafficking corridor tied to the southwest border. That much isn’t new. What’s harder to grasp is the volume moving through it.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it has seized 63,286 pounds of fentanyl since October 2022. That’s about 28.7 billion milligrams. Even accounting for purity—roughly 15 percent—the scale is hard to process. By federal estimates, that’s enough to represent potentially lethal doses for roughly 2.2 billion people.

And that’s only what’s been stopped.

What actually makes it through is impossible to pin down. Every so often, something surfaces that makes the scale harder to ignore.

Recently, a DEA operation across Colorado and neighboring states recovered nearly 17kg of fentanyl powder and about 193,000 pills. There were firearms involved, and millions in cash. Investigators later estimated that one case alone could account for roughly 920,000 potentially fatal doses.

Authorities discovered 1.7 million fake fentanyl pills in a storage facility in Highlands Ranch a few months prior.

One location. One seizure. Still one of the largest in U.S. history.

Then you get to the numbers closer to home.

About 376 fentanyl-related deaths occurred in Denver in 2025—the second-highest total over the previous five years. Statewide, synthetic opioid fatalities reached 1,005 by October. There were 852 in the previous year. 

The direction isn’t hard to see. The trajectory isn’t just rising. It’s accelerating.

“The reality is that law enforcement is intercepting only a portion of the supply,” Pazen wrote. “As long as fentanyl continues flowing into communities, policymakers must consider how legal frameworks affect both the supply and demand for the drug.”

How Colorado Got Here

Go back to 2019—before fentanyl dominated the numbers.

That year, Colorado shifted its approach to low-level drug possession. Smaller amounts, four grams or less, were no longer treated as felonies but as misdemeanors. The idea was to move people out of the criminal system and into treatment.

That was the purpose of HB19-1263.

At the time, fentanyl wasn’t what it is now.

Then the equation changed.

Four grams is not a small amount in the fentanyl era. It can represent as many as 2,000 potentially lethal doses—far beyond personal use. Critics argue that threshold created an enforcement gap, one that did not exist when the law was originally designed and one that can be exploited within the current drug market.

“The intention was clear,” Pazen wrote. “Treat addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one. The results, however, have been mixed.”

Treatment admissions did increase. But so did overdose deaths.

The CSI report notes that expanded access to treatment did not correspond with a decline in fentanyl fatalities. Even so, Pazen acknowledges that treatment remains essential. It just isn’t sufficient on its own.

In 2022, HB22-1326 was passed, making possession of four grams or more of fentanyl a felony. But it also introduced a “knowing” requirement. Prosecutors must prove that a person knew the substance contained fentanyl.

In today’s drug market, that’s a high bar.

Fentanyl is, also, frequently mixed into other substances—cocaine, methamphetamine, counterfeit pills. Users are often unaware. 

“When a lethal dose can be measured in grains of salt,” Pazen wrote, “legal loopholes around knowledge and intent may make enforcement far more difficult.”

The Legislature Declined to Act—So Voters May

In 2025, lawmakers had another opportunity.

SB25-044 would have removed the “knowing” requirement and strengthened penalties for fentanyl possession. The bill stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, failing on a 4–3 vote.

Much of the pushback centered on cost. The fiscal note projected about $1.3 million in the first year, with prison costs climbing as high as $42.7 million over five years.

The divide, however, runs deeper than cost.

At its core, the debate is about approach. Whether stricter penalties reduce harm—or risk worsening it.

Colorado’s trajectory is increasingly being compared to states like Texas, where fentanyl is subject to enhanced penalties and synthetic opioid deaths have declined by roughly 27 percent over the same period Colorado has seen increases. The CSI report points to that contrast but stops short of pinning it on any one factor. Demographics, timing, enforcement—there’s overlap, and no single explanation.

The issue didn’t move much further at the Capitol.

Lawmakers couldn’t land on a next step. That’s where it stopped. Now it may end up with voters.

A petition drive got Initiative 85 on the ballot. 

It got there with 187,699 verified signatures—well past the requirement. The proposal is simple: It would make possession of any amount of fentanyl a felony, doing away with the distinction SB25-044 tried to change.

Not everyone agrees that’s the best step. They say it’s a risk of repeating previous mistakes.

Public health activists argue that more criminalization can actually drive people away from treatment, not toward it.

“We cannot arrest our way out of a public health emergency,” Greg Shvedov of Hazelbrook Community Recovery Center testified during the bill’s hearing.

A Reassessment Overdue

The CSI report doesn’t land on a single fix. It doesn’t pretend to.

Too many pieces are moving at once—drug supply, addiction, enforcement, public health. They don’t line up neatly.

Even so, it’s difficult to miss the direction.

While the majority of the nation is seeing improvements, Colorado is one of just five states where fentanyl-related deaths are still on the rise. More than 1,600 people are gone who, by the numbers, likely wouldn’t be.

“Most of the country is moving toward fewer fentanyl deaths,” Pazen wrote. “Colorado is moving in the opposite direction.”

That reality alone raises a difficult question.

What is Colorado willing to change?

Whether that answer comes from lawmakers—or from voters—will become clearer in November.