The bill amends Washington criminal law by reenacting and amending RCW 9A.42.010 and amending RCW 9A.42.100 to make it a class B felony to knowingly or recklessly permit a dependent child or dependent adult to ingest, inhale, absorb, or have contact with a controlled substance other than cannabis. This is a change to existing statutes rather than the creation of an unrelated new chapter. The statute includes an affirmative defense, which the defendant must prove by a preponderance of the evidence, that the controlled substance was either administered or provided in the course of delivering health care services or obtained directly from, or pursuant to, a valid prescription or order of a practitioner acting in the course of professional practice. The bill references the definitions of “practitioner” and “controlled substance” in RCW 69.50.101. The text provides or revises several definitions used in the chapter, including “abandons,” “basic necessities of life,” levels of bodily injury (“bodily injury,” “substantial bodily harm,” “great bodily harm”), “child,” “dependent person,” “employed,” “good samaritan,” and “parent.” The bill was prefiled 01/03/2025 and read for the first time 01/13/2025 and was referred to the Committee on Community Safety. The extracted material does not include the full chapter or the text of the external definitions it references (for example RCW 69.50.101, RCW 18.51.010, RCW 70.128.010, and RCW 74.34.020(21)), and renumbering markers in the draft are present but unexplained.

If enacted, people who care for or live with dependent children or dependent adults (including nursing home and adult family home residents) will face much greater criminal risk and likely stricter workplace and family practices around controlled drugs other than cannabis: prosecutors will have a clear felony option to pursue in cases where a dependent person is exposed to those substances, and defendants will bear the burden of proving they were acting within health care delivery or under a valid prescription. Facility operators, caregivers, parents, and paid employees can expect increased pressure to tighten medication handling, documentation, training, and liability insurance because mistakes or reckless behavior could lead to serious criminal charges. The bill protects licensed health care practitioners and people acting under valid prescriptions by allowing that defense, so medical staff following proper professional practice are less exposed to prosecution; however, the text relies on other statutes for key definitions (like exactly which drugs and who qualifies as a “practitioner”), so some important implementation details and enforcement boundaries remain unclear.