While Gov. Jared Polis was being warmly applauded by his fellow ruling Democrats amid his eighth and final State of the State speech at the Capitol Thursday, the rest of Colorado was apprised of some cold, hard facts.

“Rocky Mountain region saw record fentanyl pill, meth seizures in 2025, DEA says,” read one headline in Thursday’s Gazette. “Fatal fentanyl overdoses in Denver up nearly 25% in 2025, health department says,” read another headline on the same day.

The connection was inescapable for many Coloradans whose lives have been marred in one way or another by the scourge of addiction and especially by the state’s ongoing opioid epidemic. Notably, it was the legislature that had decriminalized simple possession of even the hardest drugs — heroin, fentanyl and meth among them — several years earlier. And it was the governor who had signed it into law.

Even when lawmakers, under fire and in the hot seat, later relented and recriminalized possession of only fentanyl, and only partially, at that, they left it a slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanor to possess under an ounce. That’s still enough fentanyl in its pure form to kill over 14,000 people, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Now, Colorado is reaping what the legislature had sown.

And yet, those officeholders’  connection to the addiction crisis is probably lost on them. Even as that crisis was making headlines the very same day, no mention was made of it in the governor’s speech. As evidenced in opening-week news coverage, it also wasn’t on the short list for action by any lawmakers in the Democratic majority in either the House or Senate.

As reported by The Gazette, Colorado saw a 76% increase in fentanyl pill seizures last year compared to the year before. It accounted for 6.7 million, or over 14%, of the 47 million pills seized by the DEA throughout the U.S., according to the state’s top DEA official.

The collateral damage extends far beyond the Coloradans who are addicted to the deadly drug or who accidentally ingest it. 

“For the cartels to be trafficking this volume of fentanyl, they impact so many aspects of our public safety, crime in the region, that’s outside … the scope of trafficking the drugs,” said the DEA’s Special Agent in Charge David Olesky. 

“We often see morning stories, we wake up to a carjacking or an auto theft ring, a shooting, and while not everything might be causation, there’s absolutely a correlation,” Olesky said.

Meanwhile, those directly in harm’s way by dint of drug use are paying the ultimate price in droves. In Denver, 346 people died last year from fatal fentanyl doses, up from 277 the year before, according to preliminary data from the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. The trend matched that of overall drug overdoses in Colorado’s largest city, rising from 483 in 2024 to 517 in 2025, or over 7%, the data shows.

A less tin-eared legislature would be drafting legislation to turn back the rising, lethal tide of incoming opioids and other drugs. They could start by ratcheting up the penalties for “possession” — a convenient cover for low-level but pervasive street dealers.

Even if they didn’t act at first, a more tuned-in governor might be shaming them into doing so. He’d do so from the podium, maybe even in his State of the State speech.

We won’t hold our breath.