Latino voters in the state have consistently said they feel the country is going in the wrong direction, and they reiterated that dissatisfaction in a poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

Against that national critique, the annual poll has repeatedly found that Latino voters still hold a positive view of their own state. But that grace appears to have been exhausted: Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the state was moving in the wrong direction, against 40% who said the opposite.

That’s a stunning 26-percentage-point swing from the same poll last year. It’s also the first time in the poll’s six-year history that it has found an overall disapproval for Colorado’s direction among Latino voters.

“The main thing is the economy,” said Gabriel Sanchez, the pollster for BSP Research who conducted the survey. “Poll after poll, Latinos are telling us loudly: ‘Address the economy. We can’t afford housing. We can’t afford groceries. We can’t afford gas.’

“We’ve seen consistently in the poll that anger and frustration was largely at the federal government. Now, what we’re seeing is that frustration pointing toward government, period. And that’s because people are saying, ‘Look, every year things are getting worse. Somebody fix it.’ ”

The poll was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11 in partnership with the advocacy groups Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, and Voces Unidas. It included 1,606 registered Latino voters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The respondents were also critical of who influences their government, saying that wealthy donors, corporate business groups, political consultants and outside PACs, and oil and gas companies wielded too much influence in the state. Eighty-one percent said they were concerned that campaign contributions from wealthy outside groups limited policies that could address the affordability crisis.

Asked to rank what federal and state policymakers should focus on, the top responses included the cost of living and healthcare, increasing wages, and building more affordable and attainable housing. Forty-three percent of respondents said their financial situation had worsened in the past year, compared to 22% who said their situation had improved.

More than half of voters who said their situation has worsened blamed Trump. (Ten percent also blamed billionaires and corporations, the second-highest response.)

Latino voters’ dissatisfaction with Colorado’s direction did not extend to the Democratic officials leading its government. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser all had double-digit net approval ratings, with positive appraisals exceeding negative ones significantly.

Respondents also approved of Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd and their Democratic colleagues, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose 8th Congressional District seat is among the most hotly contested in the country this fall, was less appreciated. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably. Respondents in CD8 disapproved of congressional Republicans by 22 percentage points, compared to views of congressional Democrats that were net-favorable by 6 points.

That’s notable given that Latinos make up more than 38% of the CD8 electorate, .

What’s more, 61% of voters in the district disapproved of Trump. Of those who said the country was going in the wrong direction or their financial situation had worsened, a majority of Latino CD8 voters blamed Trump more than anyone else for those problems.

But Latino voters in the district also had the lowest overall opinion of the direction of the state. With an unpopular president in a blue state, Evans has focused his campaign on opposing Democrats at home. But while they’re unhappy with the state, CD8 Latino voters simultaneously have strongly favorable views of Polis and Colorado state lawmakers.

While those concerns may spell trouble for Evans, the poll’s top-line takeaway about affordability is a call to action for government officials across the political spectrum, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

“The problem is the lack of action by those in power who can do something about it,” he said. “For the first time since we began this project, more Latinos believe Colorado is moving in the wrong direction than the right direction. That is concerning. State leaders should take that seriously.”

Sánchez said the affordability concerns were “being made worse by what’s happening in our streets, in our communities.” The survey found that 40% of respondents statewide knew someone who had been deported as Trump has pushed to increase immigration arrests and deportations.

To that end, significant majorities of the poll’s respondents opposed letting immigration agents arrest people directly from jails. They backed efforts to allow Coloradans to sue federal officials and opposed allowing the governor to “voluntarily” share immigrants’ information with the federal government, a nod to Polis’ repeated attempts to cooperate with ICE subpoenas.

But the respondents were not entirely progressive. Majorities also supported conservative-backed ballot measures related to penalties for fentanyl possession; trans athletes competing in high school and college sports; and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

This time, I voted for incumbent Littleton Mayor Kyle Schlachter. Having done a good job for the city and avoided scandal, Schlachter earned my vote. If you’re a partisan voter (and most of us are), consider doing what I did this November for one race: cross party lines to vote for Michael Allen for Colorado attorney general.

Allen’s experience and expertise in litigation far exceed that of his opponent, Jena Griswold. Equally important, he has avoided scandal while in public office, while she has misused the public’s money and trust as secretary of state. During her tenure, the office accidentally leaked voting system passwords, mailed voter registration postcards to 30,000 non-citizens, and lost a critical report taxpayers paid $25,000 to produce.

Recently, a judge ordered the secretary of state to try to find some record of this report. The roots of this scandal go back to 2021 when Griswold spent $25,000 to analyze why the office was churning through staff. SageRiver Consulting produced a long report of findings and recommendations, but no one knows where it is.

This year, Suzanne Taheri, the office’s former deputy secretary of state under Wayne Williams, inquired via an open records request about the report, and Griswold refused to divulge any information.

Thanks to the ruling, Griswold will now have to get records from the consultant. that Griswold was given the report but refused to take custody of it because it was critical of her mismanagement. She did not want to have to disclose the information if someone filed an open records request.

Not only was $25,000 of taxpayer money wasted, but the public is still in the dark and still losing money. Because the secretary of state did not retain records it should have back in 2021, the office will have to pay the consultant $4,000 to search archived digital records. That will bring the tab to $29,000, and the report may not even be there.

In the meantime, former staff is filling in the blanks left by the missing report. Reese Edwards, Griswold’s former director of government and public affairs, came forward in March on behalf of multiple staff members who were “abused, bullied and ultimately discarded by Secretary Griswold.” Her office was “a hostile and volatile workplace” with a “climate of fear of retaliation.”

With this track record of public office, Griswold should finish her term and return to private practice. But wait, it doesn’t seem she ever was in practice or litigated a single case in Colorado.

Perhaps in an effort to beef up her deficient credentials for attorney general, Griswold told people earlier this year that she argued a case before the United States Supreme Court. She didn’t. I know because I was there as one of the six Republican and independent Colorado litigants in Trump v. Anderson. She was neither a fellow plaintiff nor one of our lawyers and has no right to take credit for their work.

By contrast, Michael Allen has two decades of prosecution experience, including more than five years as district attorney in the Fourth Judicial District. In that role, he prosecuted the most fentanyl death cases of any of the state’s district attorneys. He also put the murderer who killed five people at Club Q behind bars for life.

In addition to many successes, there is no record of his office abusing employees, leaking passwords, giving the public false information, or losing expensive reports.

The choice is clear. Vote for the only person with experience and integrity in the attorney general race, Michael Allen. Vote person over party.

Krista Kafer is a Denver Post Sunday columnist.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Some 10 miles in, the attackers pulled over and forced the men, Rodolfo “Rudy” Santillan-Reyes, 36, and Ryan Roth, 25, out of the vehicle. They shot Santillan-Reyes three times and Roth once, then kicked the men off a ravine, sending them tumbling down the steep slope.

Santillan-Reyes fell all the way to the bottom, surviving just long enough to drag himself under a bush. It was an attempt, investigators thought, to hide from the shooters — people he knew.

One of the killers in those 2022 slayings was no stranger to the . He was a confidential informant who was only out of jail because of a deal he had struck four months earlier with Detective Stephen Krueger and , then a senior prosecutor in the and now the elected DA.

The confidential informant, Anthony Fogle, now 49, was in frequent contact with Krueger, exchanging 146 texts during the three months before the slayings on Phantom Canyon Road. He spoke with the detective on the phone hours before the double homicide, and he met with the FBI and the detective days after the deaths.

But those facts remained hidden for years, only fully coming to light in recent months — a delay that prompted a judge to sanction the district attorney’s office and remove it from one suspect’s case in July.

Fogle and two women, Suzzette Salyer, now 44, and Toni Gurule, 45, were charged in 2024 with first-degree murder in the killings, and Fogle agreed to testify against the women in exchange for his guilty plea and a sentence capped at 25 years.

His status as a confidential informant — a person who secretly provides information to police — should have been promptly and fully disclosed to defense attorneys under Colorado’s discovery rules, which require prosecutors to share evidence with defense attorneys, found.

It wasn’t.

The detective said he forgot about the confidential informant paperwork, falsely claimed he wasn’t in contact with Fogle around the time of the homicides, and dodged a question about Fogle acting as a confidential informant while on the stand during Salyer’s jury trial.

In Gurule’s case, prosecutors fought her efforts to obtain information about the deal, and the district attorney’s office failed to promptly turn over the confidential informant agreement even after Swan ordered them to do so. Lindsey testified in July that he couldn’t remember the specifics of the plea deal that allowed Fogle to walk free before the killings, when he otherwise would have been facing decades in prison.

The judge on July 13 sanctioned the district attorney’s office for failing to share information about the arrangement with Gurule’s defense team, finding that Gurule was entitled to know about the DA’s “favorable” treatment of Fogle. The judge reduced the first-degree murder charges against Gurule to second-degree murder to punish prosecutors for what she said was a wider pattern of discovery violations in the long-troubled DA’s office, including at least 23 discovery violations under Lindsey’s leadership.

The judge removed Lindsey and the entire DA’s office from Gurule’s case on the grounds that Lindsey had a personal interest in the outcome that made it unlikely the woman would receive a fair trial unless a special prosecutor took over the case.

“I am finding that Mr. Lindsey has a personal interest in this case, given that he is an elected official that is impacted by any publicity this case receives, especially given that he was the very district attorney that four months prior to the homicide in this case, offered one of the co-defendants an extraordinary plea deal,” she said, going on to note that case law requires a situation to be extreme before a judge can appoint a special prosecutor.

“The court is unsure of how much more extreme it gets when the prosecution continues to refuse — or fails to provide — exculpatory information to the defense, is not forthcoming with the court, not to mention, allowed a detective to testify under oath to things directly contradicted by records in possession of the district attorney’s office,” she said during the July hearing.

Gurule’s defense attorney, Joshua Tolini, called the discovery violations “an intentional cover-up” in a court filing Monday and renewed his request that all charges against his client be dropped.

“In my opinion, Jeff Lindsey has blood on his hands,” he said.

Lindsey denied wrongdoing in an interview with The Denver Post and said he has hired an outside auditor to review his office’s discovery practices so they can be improved.

“There is no attempt to hide anything,” he said. “There never was.”

Confidential informant

A year before the kidnapping and murders of Santillan-Reyes and Roth, Fogle was speeding down Highway 50 at 99 mph on a Tuesday afternoon.

A sheriff’s deputy in Fremont County, southwest of Colorado Springs, pulled a U-turn to chase him down, and as the deputy drove to catch up with him, a witness saw Fogle toss a black bag and a gun out his window before he pulled over in Penrose, according to an affidavit. Deputies found small bags of methamphetamine and heroin inside the black bag. Fogle was carrying more than $764 in cash.

The man had a lengthy and violent criminal history dating back decades, including multiple convictions for assault, robbery, burglary, menacing, manufacturing drugs and tampering with evidence. He’d been released from prison four months before and was on parole. He was not allowed to possess the Taurus .357 Magnum revolver he tossed out the car’s window.

Fogle was charged with six felonies, including one that carried up to 32 years in prison. He spent several months in jail before Krueger and Lindsey crafted a deal in which Lindsey dropped all charges except a single count of careless driving — a traffic offense that carries up to 90 days in jail. The prosecutors had a discussion at the bench with the judge before Fogle pleaded guilty in October 2021; that discussion was not included in a transcript of the hearing.

Krueger testified in May that he and Lindsey offered Fogle that plea deal because Fogle provided information that led to a large drug bust of a suspect named “Jason Baumgartner,” according to a transcript of the hearing. That appears to be , who was arrested in September 2021 after sheriff’s deputies found 50 pounds of marijuana, three pounds of methamphetamine, 30 guns and four stolen cars in his home.

“In a nutshell, yes (Fogle) was a CI for a short time,” Krueger wrote in a recent email to prosecutors. “Jeff and I got him a deal and out of jail.”

After Fogle’s release in October 2021, Krueger texted with the man and sought information from him about criminal activity in Fremont County, court testimony revealed. Krueger did not sign Fogle, who was still on parole, as an official confidential informant for the sheriff’s office right away. Parolees are not allowed to work as confidential informants except with special permission from the . Tolini, Gurule’s attorney, alleged in court that Krueger knew about that policy and delayed the official paperwork because of the rule.

Tolini pointed to a text exchange in which Fogle offered to set someone up to be arrested with guns and drugs in exchange for cash, and Krueger responded that such a deal “may have to wait till after parole,” according to court testimony.

Fogle did sign the confidential informant paperwork in January 2022, but Krueger canceled the official arrangement after 10 days when Fogle became a suspect in a different case, according to court testimony. The detective continued to stay in touch with Fogle, who remained on parole until April 2022, according to the Department of Corrections.

“Of course, I’m going to try and keep in contact with the suspect, right?” Krueger testified in May. “Why wouldn’t I want to know where he’s at, who he’s with, what he’s driving, where he’s staying?”

It was that January 2022 paperwork — signed weeks before the double homicide — that Krueger testified he “forgot… existed” when Fogle and his co-defendants were later charged with the killings. Krueger falsely told prosecutors that he hadn’t had any contact with Fogle around the time of the double homicide — a claim disproven by text messages that prosecutors had in their possession.

Three days after the homicides, on Feb. 11, 2022, Krueger texted Fogle to ask about the killings, testimony revealed.

“What’s the word on the street with the Phantom Canyon (expletive)?” the detective asked in the message.

At the May hearing, Krueger said that Fogle was not a confidential informant because, although he routinely provided tips, the detective never received information that he could use to make an arrest after Fogle was released.

“I tried to cultivate a confidential informant out of him,” he testified, according to a transcript. “…Confidential informants are useful. He was useless. He said he was going to — we talked, but he never provided anything. So to call him a confidential informant is false. I wanted him to be. Did he? No. He never provided anything credible.”

“It was superficial,” the detective continued a moment later. “He pulled the wool over my eyes. I wish I never would have got him out of jail.”

Krueger was placed on administrative leave on June 11 for a pending internal affairs investigation, Sheriff Allen Cooper confirmed Friday. The sheriff declined to detail the nature of the investigation, but Swan, the judge who listened to the detective’s testimony in May, later noted that she had “concerns about the credibility of Detective Krueger.”

A man who answered a phone number listed for Krueger last week hung up without commenting.

‘Two-faced’ prosecution

Swan in July also noted a “lack of full candor” from prosecutors in the Gurule case.

She chastised the prosecution for “concerning acts,” including failing to turn over Fogle’s confidential informant agreement during the regular course of discovery and failing to promptly turn it over even after she specifically ordered them to do so in January.

She noted prosecutors made representations in court that “were not wholly truthful,” and called prosecutors “two-faced” for failing to follow court orders while also seeking to punish others for failing to follow court orders.

Lindsey, who was subpoenaed to testify in July about the 2021 plea deal he gave Fogle, said on the stand that the plea agreement was “not typical,” but that he couldn’t remember why he offered it.

“My best answer to that is he must have had really good information,” he told The Post. “I don’t remember all of that actually happening.”

Lindsey left the 11th Judicial District Attorney’s Office shortly after the deal with Fogle was made, and was working in a different jurisdiction when the double homicide happened in 2022 and when Fogle was charged in April 2024. Lindsey rejoined the office as the appointed district attorney in November 2024. He did not handle Fogle’s homicide case directly, he said.

“I’m the DA, so the buck stops with me,” he told The Post. “However, I was never assigned to this case. I never really worked the case. … I knew about the case and trusted the assigned prosecutors to take care of any discovery issues.”

Tolini believes that Lindsey directed his office to hide details about the confidential informant plea deal on purpose to keep the arrangement “hidden from the public,” he said.

Lindsey rejected any suggestion of a cover-up and said Tolini’s allegations in court filings were a “hyperbolic argument.” He said Tolini’s comments about the district attorney having blood on his hands were offensive and noted that a judge approved Fogle’s plea agreement.

“There is no way I could have known anything about what Mr. Fogle would do months after the plea agreement,” he said. “…Over 90% of our cases plead across the nation and within the state of Colorado. Every single one that goes south like this is traumatic. And to try to feed off that trauma, I just don’t think it is appropriate.”

Lindsey after the previous elected DA, Linda Stanley, was disbarred in part because of discovery violations in the office. Lindsey has now invited the , a New York nonprofit, to do a full evaluation of prosecutors’ discovery practices, he said.

The probe will include interviews with staff, a review of prosecution data and the office’s policies and procedures, the nonprofit said in a statement announcing the assessment in July. Lindsey said prosecutors have already gone through the 23 discovery violations that Swan cited in her ruling to analyze and attempt to fix the problems.

“We were called on the carpet, and we’ve responded in kind,” he said. “…We don’t shirk any of these duties in discovery. We take it seriously. If something happens, it is usually some kind of omission or mistake. It is never on purpose. We don’t hide evidence.”

The double homicide

Fogle in March pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the killings of Ryan Roth and Rodolfo “Rudy” Santillan-Reyes, the two men shot on Phantom Canyon Road.

Investigators believe that Toni Gurule and Suzzette Salyer, who were a couple, were in an ongoing dispute with the two men, who lived next door to each other and were in an intimate relationship with each other. Roth had posted derogatory songs he recorded on social media about Gurule, according to an indictment, including accusing her of selling fentanyl to people who fatally overdosed.

Roth and Santillan-Reyes told neighbors and acquaintances that if anything ever happened to them, the women would be responsible. Gurule and Salyer’s home wifi network was named “(Expletive) Rudy,” according to court records.

Fogle said the women came to him in February 2022 to act as “muscle” in their dispute, according to court records. He claimed he helped the women kidnap the two men and that he believed the plan was just to scare Roth and Santillan-Reyes. Fogle said that he reassured the men that nothing bad was going to happen to them as the trio drove the men up Phantom Canyon Road on the night of the killings.

Once the men were out of the vehicle, Fogle said that one of the men made a motion either to run or to come at Fogle, and that he shot the man. Salyer then shot the second victim, he claimed.

Salyer took her case to a jury trial; the proceedings . She then pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in April, according to court records, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Fogle was arrested on federal drug trafficking and gun charges in August 2022 after he sold drugs to a confidential informant working for the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI. Fogle later met the informant in a hotel room, carrying drugs and armed with a sawed-off shotgun, while FBI agents observed from the next room over.

Fogle was sentenced to just over 14 years in prison in September 2024 in the federal case.

In the double homicide, Fogle pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a prison sentence of between 16 and 25 years, to be served at the same time as his federal sentence, according to records reviewed by The Post. His sentencing is set for Sept. 10.

Gurule has pleaded not guilty and continues to fight the charges against her. Her trial, which had been scheduled for July, was pushed back to late August after Swan appointed a special prosecutor.

The judge noted that the revelations about Fogle’s work as a confidential informant also open up an avenue for Salyer to seek to overturn her conviction.

Last year, 45,093 people died in Colorado — an increase in raw numbers from 44,527 deaths in 2024, but an improvement after adjusting for population growth and aging.

The death rate still wasn’t back to 2019 levels in Colorado, however, which made the state an anomaly. Nationwide, the age-adjusted death rate hit an all-time low in 2025, according to from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with mortality rates decreasing for .

The continued post-pandemic elevation comes even as Colorado has made progress against common diseases. The adjusted death rate is down since 2019 for seven of the top 10 causes: cancer, heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases (such as emphysema), stroke and related cerebrovascular diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, suicide and diabetes.

The exceptions were overdoses, other types of accidents and liver disease.

High number of youth traffic deaths

Rather than one threat killing people early, the data points to three causes: vehicle accidents killing children and teens, drug overdoses shortening working-age adults’ lives and older people dying of malnutrition — though that could reflect changes in how doctors fill out death certificates.

Last year, 161 people under 25 died in traffic accidents, up from 129 in 2019. In Colorado, motor vehicle accidents are the top cause of death for children after their first birthday and the second-leading cause for adults younger than 25, behind suicide.

Traffic deaths in teenagers particularly increased, with 86 people between 15 and 20 dying, up from 70 the previous year and 45 a decade earlier. The Colorado Department of Transportation put out a notice in June reminding the public that even , or surviving if they do get in an accident, if they obey speed limits, don’t drive while impaired or distracted and wear their seatbelts.

Nationwide, preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed traffic deaths were down 8% for people between 15 and 24, and 12% for younger children. Neither the NHTSA nor CDOT made an expert available to discuss why deaths might be rising in Colorado specifically.

Motor vehicle deaths also rose for middle-aged people in Colorado, but a larger increase in overdoses was the top factor keeping their mortality rates up.

Drug overdose deaths still elevated

Last year, 1,554 people died of unintentional drug overdoses, up from 1,409 in 2024 and 884 in 2019. Roughly 86% of those deaths involved working-age adults, and overdoses were the top cause of death for people between 25 and 44.

About three-quarters of all fatal overdoses involved fentanyl and more than half involved methamphetamine or other stimulants. Some people intentionally mix those substances, while others may have bought a contaminated dose.

Fatal overdoses dropped nationwide in 2024, but partially rebounded in Colorado and last year. For three months in spring 2025, Denver alone averaged two overdose deaths per day.

While no one can be certain what happened, public health officials in Denver pointed to a change in supply, with fentanyl powder replacing counterfeit pills, as a possible cause for the spike in overdoses. Harm-reduction advocates raised concerns that drug busts might have precipitated the wave of deaths if they pushed people to unfamiliar suppliers.

, Denver is reporting about 40 overdoses per month, which is in line with trends since 2021.

Interestingly, overdose deaths are flat among teens and young adults, with 74 people between 15 and 24 dying from accidentally taking too much of a drug in both 2019 and 2025. (Most years, the state doesn’t separately report overdose numbers in children and younger teens, because of its policy of withholding data for privacy reasons if fewer than three people fall into a category.)

Surveys suggest the average teenager is , and efforts to raise awareness of the dangers of counterfeit pills seem to have paid off, said Lisa Raville, executive director of the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver.

Schools are teaching kids how to protect themselves and others if they use drugs, and parents are packing kits with the overdose-reversal medication naloxone for their college students, she said.

“Folks are doing a much better job raising awareness,” she said.

Those measures haven’t shown the same benefits for working-age adults, who are more likely to turn to illicit drugs for pain relief or to stave off withdrawal than for experimentation, Raville said. In addition, adults tend to have more health conditions than teens, putting them at greater risk from the , both of which can put strain on the heart.

Hopefully, drug deaths will decrease again this year, now that harm-reduction organizations in Denver have drug-checking machines to identify when a sample includes unexpected chemicals, Raville said. But there are limits to people’s ability to protect themselves when the amount of drugs like fentanyl in a pill or powder is wildly unpredictable, she said.

found that a one-gram dose could contain anywhere from one milligram to 650 milligrams of fentanyl, making it practically impossible for people to gauge how much they could tolerate.

“It’s really the supply and using alone” that are causing deaths, she said.

Deaths from overdoses were also up for older people, but in small numbers. Fewer than three people over 85 died of overdoses, as did 21 people between 75 and 84 — up from only three in 2019.

Malnutrition among the elderly

The oldest groups have generally benefited from progress against chronic diseases, with the rates of deaths from cancer and heart disease dropping even as the older population continues to grow.

Causes linked to possible frailty are bucking the trend, though, with death rates from malnutrition up more than 50% from 2019. Deaths from falls also increased, though not as dramatically.

While younger people who have an eating disorder or are being abused can die of malnutrition, it happens rarely enough that the state doesn’t report specific numbers for groups below middle age most years.

For people 85 and up, however, malnutrition is the seventh-leading cause of death, behind falls and ahead of Parkinson’s disease. The state’s data showed 319 malnutrition deaths in that age group, meaning it was the cause for roughly one in 50 deaths.

For people between 75 and 84, it was the 10th-leading cause, between kidney disease and sepsis. The state reported 160 malnutrition deaths in that group.

Colorado isn’t alone in showing an increase. A found they decreased from 1999 to 2006, held roughly steady until 2013, and then increased sharply nationwide. The rise was most pronounced among people 85 and older.

Researchers haven’t nailed down whether older people are more likely to be malnourished than in the past, but some policy changes may have made doctors more likely to note malnutrition on death certificates.

Hospitals, nursing homes and hospice providers have had incentives to watch for malnutrition since the mid-2010s, either to prove someone is progressing toward death or to avoid being penalized because a death or complication appeared avoidable, .

The increase could reflect that hospitals are paying more attention to nutritional biomarkers in the blood, said Dr. Sei Lee, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. When doctors are filling out someone’s death certificate, they often turn to recent test results for clues about contributing factors, he said.

Roughly speaking, there are three ways an older person could become malnourished, with the inability to afford food as the most obvious one, Lee said. Another possibility is that people who have trouble with swallowing or the mechanics of eating don’t get enough food if they don’t have a caregiver with the time to feed them manageable bites, he said.

The most common scenario is likely that people lose their appetites when they have metastatic cancer or advanced dementia, Lee said. Digesting food is relatively laborious for the body, so when it has a more urgent priority, it shuts down appetite, as anyone who has ever lost interest in food while battling the flu knows. That was why AIDS patients would waste away before antivirals made HIV a condition people can live with for decades, he said.

Cases where a patient is malnourished are challenging, because research has shown putting in a feeding tube or giving them appetite stimulants doesn’t improve their outcomes, Lee said. Ideally, doctors can find a treatable cause, but near the end of someone’s life, that isn’t always realistic, he said.

“When we see a patient who is not meeting their nutritional needs, there is something pretty profound wrong,” he said.

I was busy weighing the benefits of ice cream against the eventual sugar crash and tantrums that would come later. But I have a lot of respect for anyone passionate enough to stand around with a clipboard in the ninety-degree heat.

I assumed this guy was a dedicated volunteer.

Plus, it seemed like a good time to teach my older kid about ballot initiatives, a hallmark of direct democracy.

In Colorado (and 23 other states), citizens can propose new legislation; if they hammer out the language with the title board, and manage to gather enough signatures, it gets added to the ballot for voters to decide.

This grassroots process has given us things like recreational cannabis and Universal Pre-K. But it����ap also easily manipulated by billionaires, who can spend millions to push their own preferred measures.

But I didn’t know that yet. I still thought this guy was a volunteer. “Sure,” I said.

He thrust a clipboard at me. “We’re out here trying to lower taxes,” he said. “With a flat tax.”

“Wait,” I said, wondering if I was just sleep-deprived. “Wouldn’t a flat tax just help billionaires?”

He looked at me like he was reconsidering something. “Oh, then you’ll love this one,” he said, handing me a different clipboard. “It����ap about accessibility, making all ballot initiatives be written at an eighth-grade reading level.”

Accessibility. Okay. My kids were yelling again. I signed it.

But later, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why would one volunteer be circulating two petitions that seemed so ideologically opposed? I started researching.

That����ap when I learned about Advance Colorado, the organization behind both campaigns. The group doesn’t disclose its donors, and they’ve already spent millions to influence our ballots before.

In 2024, they managed to get one of their ballot initiatives passed. It diverts $350 million to police departments — by siphoning the money away from other social services.

Now they’re pushing a slew of other initiatives, and they’ve already gathered enough signatures to add two of them to our ballots this November. One would make the possession of any amount of fentanyl a felony, and increase criminal penalties, despite many studies showing that such policies have zero positive impacts. (This measure is clearly a gift for the private prison industry, which would see its profits increase as more people get incarcerated.) The other measure would force Colorado police departments to report people to ICE.

It����ap unlikely that Coloradans actually want this.

In December, a reporter for the nonprofit Colorado Times Recorder managed to record signature-gatherers outside a Boulder grocery store, where they were telling voters the measure would rein in ICE. One Boulder resident told reporters she’d been asked to sign it to “stop ICE from attacking … nonviolent criminals.”

Misleading voters like this isn’t technically illegal.

Even if it was, it wouldn’t be the first time an Advance Colorado campaign has run afoul of the law. Earlier this year, two paid signature-gatherers were indicted for forging signatures on one of the organization’s 2024 petitions. The organization itself faced zero repercussions. (Colorado is one of 16 states where it����ap legal to pay petition-circulators per signature.)

My interaction with that guy with the clipboard was starting to make a lot more sense.

But why would Advance Colorado want all future ballot initiatives to be written at an eighth-grade reading level?

According to progressive think tank The Bell Policy Center, this one is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” because it sounds reasonable but would also remove any language about how a measure would affect state budgets. (For example, like if diverting money to law enforcement would require cuts to Medicaid or school funding.)

But the real answer might be even simpler. Studies show it����ap harder to get people to vote “yes” on a ballot measure than to vote “no” — but it����ap easier when the measure is written in plain language.

Advance Colorado is trying to pave the way for their future ballot measures.

It����ap a good strategy — if you’re trying to push right-wing legislation in an increasingly progressive state.

We should have rules to prevent dark-money groups from hijacking our ballot initiative process. But until then, we should make sure everyone knows what Advance Colorado is up to.

Cecelia Thorn is a mom and former journalist who’s lived in Colorado for 20 years. She writes a Substack newsletter called “Thoughts Not Bots.”

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Then March hit.

Within Denver, 63 people died of overdoses that month, followed by 58 in April and 63 again in May – an average of two people per day, every day, for three months straight. March and May , and while experts point to changes in the drug supply as a likely culprit, no one can definitively say what happened.

Most of the people who died had both fentanyl and methamphetamine in their systems, said Dr. Sterling McLaren, chief medical examiner for the city of Denver.

Fatal overdoses also are up for the state as a whole, rising from 1,603 in 2024 to 1,813 in 2025, according to preliminary data from the .

The increase came at a time when most of the country continued to see improvement. Preliminary data shows fatal overdoses went down 15% nationwide in 2025, with the most significant drops along the coasts, .

The biggest exceptions were New Mexico, where overdose deaths rose about 21%; Arizona, 17%; and Colorado, 13%. Other states with smaller increases included North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana.

A chaotic supply

A shift in the form of fentanyl people use could has caused some of the overdoses, said Ally Arnaiz, overdose prevention and education program coordinator for the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. Since fentanyl showed up in Colorado, people generally took it by smoking counterfeit pills, colloquially known as “blues,” off a piece of foil. But powder, which is easier to inject, makes up an increasing share of the supply, she said.

Without regular testing and surveys, no one can be sure if the drug supply has become more potent, or if people are using it in riskier ways, Arnaiz said. While people do overdose from smoking fentanyl, the chance is higher when injecting.

“We’re dealing with an illicit drug supply, one that does not have oversight,” she said.

than in the rest of the country, so the region might simply not be as far along the curve of reducing deaths, said Thomas Stopka, a professor of epidemiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Other factors could include regional differences in the availability of naloxone and medication for opioid use disorder, he said.

But data from seizures does show powder fentanyl making in-roads in the Southwest, Stopka said. Powders could be more potent, and are also easier to mix with other substances, such as meth, he said.

“The fake pills may have been more predictable, to a certain extent,” he said.

Dave Olesky, special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain division for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said the DEA also observed a shift from counterfeit pills to powder, but he sees that as a positive, since people who aren’t experienced with drugs are more willing to take a pill than to smoke or inject something.

“If somebody doesn’t take a pill that doesn’t come from the doctor, we are going to make so much progress against the fentanyl epidemic,” he said.

While cases of teenagers taking what they thought were diverted pills do happen, Denver’s 2025 data showed only 36 of the 674 people who died of drug-related causes were younger than 25, including six who were under 18. Statewide data by age isn’t yet available.

The purity of seized pills has gone down over time, though it still can vary significantly, Olesky said. People who are accustomed to a certain amount of fentanyl may be using more pills to get the desired effect, with some dying if they get a stronger-than-expected dose in the mix, he said.

Lisa Raville, executive director of the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver, isn’t sure a shift in form is to blame. Powder fentanyl has been available to some degree for years, but with an unregulated market, people have no way of knowing if a batch is dramatically more potent than usual or contains additives that have their own risks, she said.

The Pennsylvania-based reported finding 134 relatively new substances across drug samples it tested in 2025. The sheer range of potential substances means that, even if someone uses a fentanyl test strip, .

Providers and health departments on the East Coast generally identify new contaminants in the drug supply early on. Recent additives include , a veterinary drug that can cause severe flesh wounds when injected; , another animal drug which causes a withdrawal syndrome that includes a potentially life-threatening spike in blood pressure; and more-potent synthetic opioids such as , and .

Most of the new chemicals showing up on the East Coast don’t appear to be common in Denver at this point, Arnaiz said. Drug supplies are highly variable, so each local market needs data about potency and adulterants, she said.

“The drug supply in Denver is very different from what you see in Grand Junction,” she said.

While people died from heroin overdoses, long-term users generally had a fairly accurate picture of how much they could take, Arnaiz said. The arrival of fentanyl and other additives created a more chaotic supply, where dosing is a matter of guessing, but the fear of withdrawal pushes people to take the risk, she said.

“No one wants to be dependent on a substance under these conditions,” she said.

Drug seizures are up, for good or ill

Last year, seizures of both fentanyl and methamphetamine were up about 30% in Colorado compared to 2024, said Keith Weis, executive director of the , which offers training and coordination for law enforcement in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Montana. No one can know the amount of drugs available on the market, but generally, higher seizures point to greater demand, he said.

The DEA had a record year for seizing fentanyl in the region, most of which starts with cartels in Mexico and moves up Interstate 25, Olesky said. One particularly notable bust was a storage unit in Douglas County holding 1.7 million counterfeit pills, plus enough powder to make about 6 million more, he said. A person not involved in the drug trade had purchased the unit’s contents without seeing them after the previous owner got arrested and stopped paying rent.

Olesky described the seizures as a major success: each pill taken off the street is no longer available for someone to misuse. But recent studies in and found short-term increases in overdoses following police drug seizures.

When someone’s usual seller gets arrested or doesn’t have product available, they find another source, which may be more potent or mixed with other substances, Stopka said. Increased law enforcement activity in an area can also make people reluctant to seek treatment or harm reduction services, he said.

“When drug seizures happen, that leads to more uncertainty in the drug supply,” he said.

How to reduce deaths?

So far, overdose deaths don’t appear to be surging in 2026, though the data is incomplete because toxicology testing can take weeks or months.

Olesky said he doesn’t think Colorado will make real progress until it provides more drug education and sends a message that substance use isn’t acceptable. The state also needs penalties for drug trafficking that are severe enough to dissuade criminals, he said.

“When you see the same things happening, the criminals are not being deterred,” he said.

Colorado increased penalties for fentanyl possession in 2022 and created the category of fentanyl distribution causing death for people who sell someone a mixture containing fentanyl, resulting in a fatal overdose. Raville believes the law has made people using drugs together less likely to call for help if someone has an overdose.

“Most people who use drugs are low-level sellers” who could face a lengthy prison term if they call for help, she said.

The city has promised that it will start distributing drug-checking machines to harm-reduction groups later this year, Raville said. Unlike fentanyl test strips, which can only detect one substance, the machines will be able to give a more holistic, real-time view of the supply, she said.

“We need to be more nimble in understanding what’s in the drug supply today,” she said.

Under the checking program, people will share a small portion of the drugs they intend to consume, Arnaiz said. Even if people still decide to use them after concerning results, they’ll still contribute to keeping others safe, she said.

“People who use drugs, despite the perception of the general community, really care about their health and the health of the community,” she said.

Denver has invested in connecting people to health care and harm reduction efforts, such as offering clean needles and naloxone, Arnaiz said. Ideally, it would be able to use funds more creatively, such as offering small rewards to people who are trying to quit stimulants – a method known as contingency management.

People get scared when they see public drug use, and compassion is running short, Arnaiz said. But relationships, along with naloxone, are some of the best tools to prevent more deaths, she said.

Raville would like to see the city set up sites where people can use the drugs they’ve purchased under supervision, meaning someone would be there to intervene if they start to overdose. But ultimately, she thinks the only thing to really stem the deaths would be a safer supply, such as medical-grade fentanyl patches and prescription amphetamines as alternatives to illicit opioids and meth.

“Alcohol isn’t legal because it’s safer. It’s safer because it’s legal,” she said.

They just have to get past Polis first.

Ninety-two of the Capitol’s 100 legislators voted for , which is now headed for an almost-certain veto by the term-limited governor. Among other things, the bill would require state employees who work as lobbyists for the governor and lieutenant governor to formally register with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and disclose their positions on bills — just as private lobbyists are required to do.

The bill was proposed as a direct reaction to Polis. Some lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled General Assembly have wanted to bring the bill for years in response to the Democratic governor’s hands-on approach to the legislature, which has included frequent veto threats and direct lobbying to amend bills.

The measure would also require the legislative liaisons for state agencies to publicly disclose their positions on each bill they weigh in on.

“It was born out of frustration, a universal experience among most of us,” said Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat sponsoring the bill.

Polis’ efforts in the Capitol have been unusual, she and other lawmakers said. Previous governors — some of whom had split or opposing partisan control in the legislature — were not nearly as engaged in lawmaking as Polis has been. His office “has been known to pull people out of committees ahead of a vote, and there’s a lot of stuff happening 15 minutes, 20 minutes before you’re going into committee or a vote. So this is born from that experience, when you’re caught unawares,” Froelich said.

Private lobbying already holds significant sway over the legislature in the Capitol, where lobbyists often have more experience in the building than lawmakers themselves because of Colorado’s term limits. That effect is magnified with Polis, who can veto any bill he dislikes. To survive veto threats, lawmakers frequently rewrite or abandon bills altogether — .

This year alone, Polis’ opposition has prompted changes to legislation regulating 3D-printed guns and immigration enforcement. His veto threat also prompted lawmakers to kill that would’ve closed some corporate tax cuts and directed the new revenue to a tax credit for working families.

Froelich said that if Polis is known to oppose a bill, some lawmakers will shift their votes to align with him.

But that opposition is often not made public.

Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Fort Morgan Republican who’s also sponsoring the state lobbyists measure, said lawmakers were frustrated about being “played like a puppet.” She said the first floor — shorthand for Polis’ office, which is located on one level below the legislative chambers in the Capitol — had not always been transparent in its position on bills.

Sen. Lisa Cutter, a Jefferson County Democrat and another sponsor, said the proposal was ultimately about transparency. She recounted negotiations that helped shape bills, only for them still to meet a veto once Polis officially weighed in. She’s also faced criticism from constituents upset that a bill was watered down — but with no record revealing that changes were made at the behest of the governor.

“The governor, they talk about being coequal branches. And that’s technically true, but does anyone really think that we have as much power as the governor?” Cutter said. “…  And I think there’s the general feeling that this governor has weighed in a lot on policy, instead of being more of an executive branch.”

She said the bill was about “wanting to balance it out a little bit.”

Though Polis’ posture inspired SB-147, he’s unlikely to ever be subject to its requirements.

First, he will leave office early next year, before the next regular legislative session begins. Lawmakers said his departure gave them a chance for the legislature to reset its relationship with the first floor — and avoid letting Polis’ approach become the precedent for future governors.

The second reason is that Polis appears certain to veto the bill.

In a statement, spokesman Eric Maruyama said that the governor would be more open to SB-147 if lawmakers “held themselves to the same standards as defined in the bill.” (Because lawmakers vote, oftentimes repeatedly, on legislation, their positions are recorded publicly.)

“Staff members in the Governor’s office are not registered lobbyists, and it would be absurd to have them treated the same way when legislators are not,” Maruyama wrote in a statement. “The Governor’s Office always works with any legislators in good faith, most commonly in an informational capacity. This is a clear attempt to limit (future governors’) ability to meaningfully participate in the legislative process, and to curb the decision-making authority of any future governor.”

Polis’ office also provided a list characterizing how state legislatures elsewhere regulate lobbyists, arguing that SB-147 would put Colorado out of step with other states. Many of the states exempt government officials from lobby requirements.

Theoretically, the bill has enough legislative support to override a veto, but the clock is quickly running down on the legislative session. Had lawmakers acted more quickly, they could’ve passed SB-147 with enough time to override a veto before the session ends Wednesday night.

But the bill’s journey through the House went slowly — and the window to override a potential Polis veto before the session ended slammed shut.

The House’s top two Democratic leaders, Speaker Julie McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran, were the only two House lawmakers to oppose the bill — and they also hold scheduling sway over legislation moving through their chamber.

Duran said she hadn’t factored the veto clock into her thinking and was focused on efficiently moving bills through the House.

“For me, just like right now, (it’s about) what’s coming out, what is ready — because we have six days left,” she said last week, citing the days then remaining. “So, I’m always looking at it through a different purview than that.”

She and McCluskie said they had concerns about SB-147’s impact on the Colorado Judicial Department. The measure would also have required more transparency around lobbyists for that agency.

Johnson said she’s unsure if she’ll bring the bill back next year, should Polis reject it. Froelich, who is term-limited and won’t return to the House in 2027, said some other lawmakers have discussed reviving the bill.

“Like I said, it����ap an opportunity to turn the page and have a different relationship,” she said. “A more transparent one.”

This is a question parents face today, as changing cultural attitudes have inspired marijuana legalization in some states, and other sweeping drug reforms. School-based drug education is slowly adapting to these new norms by equipping kids not only with science-based information about various substances and their impact on the adolescent brain, but also the life skills they need to make healthy choices.

Still, parents have a vital role to play when it comes to prevention and intervention, experts say.

“Parents, along with schools, are one of the primary socialization agents for drug use prevention,” said Devin McCauley, post-doctoral scholar at , which studies adolescent behavior and develops drug prevention curricula.

While advocating that kids simply avoid drugs and alcohol may seem instinctual, research shows that this strategy doesn’t typically lead to abstinence. Today, experts like McCauley recommend a more nuanced approach to discussing drugs as a family — one that starts with fostering open lines of communication and demystifying these conversations so they don’t feel taboo.

Building a foundation of trust is essential so that youth will take what their parents say seriously and also feel comfortable confiding in them when issues arise.

“We’re never going to live in a landscape where 0% of the kids try substances, right? When parents take a ‘just say no’ approach and someone maybe tries something at a party or feels pressured, uses a vape because they feel cornered by friends, they’ve already used it — and they’re like, now what do I do? Do I hide it? There’s nothing in place for people who have experimented and don’t know what to do next,” McCauley said.

“Understanding that kids are being targeted and having empathy, work with your kid — like hey, I know this can be a really tough issue, let����ap team up and be partners to make sure you’re safe,” he said.

Here are five practical tips to help parents navigate talking to their kids about drugs.

Start conversations early and return to them often

In today’s culture, experts say it is never too early to start talking to your kid about drugs and, in fact, it should be a topic revisited often.

Instead of working up to a single, all-encompassing conversation, consider discussing drugs in small, incremental ways, McCauley said. That will allow you to circle back without feeling like there’s pressure on the topic.

It is, however, important to make the conversations age-appropriate. For example, parents can start talking with preschoolers about cold or toothache medicines, what they do and how they should only be used when feeling unwell. As children reach middle school, parents can approach conversations with curiosity and open-mindedness in order to understand exactly what is happening in their kids’ social circles.

“I know this is common sense, but just building a strong relationship with the youth in your life — spending one-on-one time, listening without immediate judgement, knowing what children are interested in, what their activities are, who their friends are — that����ap foundational, so that when they experience stress or peer pressure, they’re more likely going to come to you,” said Alison Long, health promotion manager at the .

As they reach their teenage years, it is OK to be specific about the substances you think they will encounter. McCauley suggests generalizing or using the news to ask open-ended questions that take judgement out of the tone. For example, “I’ve seen a lot about nicotine vapes on the news. What do you think about that? What do you notice among your friends and peers?” Those set the stage for a different conversation than asking teens, “You’re not vaping, are you?”

To avoid putting pressure on these discussions, initiate them in places and at times where you naturally connect with your kid, McCauley added. That could be on drives to and from extracurricular activities, while watching television or walking, or anywhere else you usually spend quality time.

Practice active listening

Conversations about drugs should be just that — two-way exchanges. McCauley and Long advise parents to listen more than they talk to build trust and validate their child’s experiences.

“There’s data saying teens want to be able to open up and talk about this with their parents. A lot of them aren’t quite sure how. They fear being judged, they fear consequences. So if we respond in a way that is an invitation and shows that we trust them as well, I think that can acknowledge that need on part of teens and have this be an ongoing, evolving conversation,” McCauley said.

To that end, avoid lecturing and interrogating teens, which will almost assuredly turn them off to whatever message you are trying to get across. Be curious and ask questions. That includes asking for permission to share your personal perspective and understanding of drug risks.

All this works to show adolescents that they are valued, trusted and that, as a parent, you want to work with them. Health organizations across the state even host educational opportunities for teens and trusted adults to attend together, which can further strengthen relationships as well as offer essential knowledge to both parties.

“We try to stress that knowledge is power on both parts, on the adult and the youth,” said Lyndall Young, nurse and instructor at , which curates a variety of drug education programming for youth and adults. Whether it’s learning how to use naloxone, understanding the risks of opioids or getting tips on how to navigate hard conversations, “the more they know, they can go out and not only be safe for themselves, but be safe for their whole family,” Young said.

Don’t freak out if you hear something you don’t like

The whole point of building trust with your kids is to open the floor for honesty. So if your teen confides in you and you don’t like what you hear — such as they or their friends have been experimenting with drugs and alcohol — it is important to remain calm.

“If you hear something that����ap alarming to you, take a beat, take a breath,” McCauley said. It is fair for parents to express their concerns, he added, but do it in a way that avoids shaming. Stick to personal statements such as “I am a little concerned” or “I just want you to be safe.”

Asking questions and getting feedback here is also essential to understand a young person’s motivation and the context in which this happened. Long suggested leading with an affirmation — e.g. “Thank you for sharing that with me.” — and following up with curiosity: Do you want to talk about it? Why did you do that? How did it go? Can we talk about some of the risks?

“If it makes you upset and angry, recognize that. That����ap OK and understandable as a parent, but maybe that����ap not the time for you to give your side. Maybe just focus on listening,” Long said.

Lean on the facts

Removing emotion and judgement from drug discussions can be difficult, but leaning on the facts will assist parents.

Resources like the offer parent brochures that outline need-to-know facts about fentanyl and how to share those with your teen. Other health leaders like the and have guidance for parents to bolster their knowledge about marijuana and frame discussions.

One of the most compelling avenues, experts say, is harping on the fact that adolescent brains aren’t done developing until age 25, so using substances can have long-lasting impacts. Note that it is also illegal to use alcohol, marijuana and nicotine until age 21, and doing so could have legal implications for a teen’s future.

McCauley noted there is a fine line between informing kids about drugs and teaching them how to use. Approach these subjects in ways that empower teens to share the information with their friends and be a leader or in a position to help when issues or questions arise among their peers.

“There’s a difference between saying, ‘When you use, slow down, wait two hours,’ versus ‘adolescents have gotten really sick because they ate three or four (cannabis) gummies in a row. They didn’t know it can take up to an hour (to take effect),’” said McCauley. “It’s worthwhile to have that information and you can try to present it in a way that����ap not an instruction manual.”

Model the behavior you hope to see

Stressing again that parents are among the primary role models for kids as they age, Long emphasized exhibiting the behaviors you hope to see in your children. What you do is going to impact your kids more than what you say, she said. For example, if you are stressed, promote healthy coping mechanisms like taking a walk or calling a friend.

“If you’re going to have wine, maybe don’t say, ‘I’m so stressed, I’m going to have a glass of wine.’ Rather, if you are going to have a glass of wine, have it with dinner and show you can drink responsibly,” Long said.

She and McCauley also advised setting clear expectations for your kids, even brainstorming family values together to get teens to buy in. Additionally, make sure all the adults in the household are on the same page.

“One of the whole points of adolescence is to become your own person, develop your own autonomy and your own independence. If parents can respect that and empower it����ap going to go a long way,” McCauley said.

Rightfully so, since the mural was inspired by a similar drawing she had done for a sticker contest hosted by , a youth-focused drug prevention organization. It was one of the winning designs and earned her the opportunity to adapt the sticker into a piece of public art.

“I think it inspires kids to give out their creativity and use their voices to say what they’re proud of,” Sprouse said at the mural reveal. “Balloons rise up, and if you see someone out there doing drugs, help them, be a support system for them, show them that they’re able to rise up.”

Rise Above’s art projects aim to engage youth in community initiatives that foster personal relationships and give them a sense of belonging, two factors that studies show are linked to lower rates of substance use. The nonprofit promotes to debunk the myth that teen drug use is pervasive and help young people cultivate healthy behaviors, said executive director Kent MacLennan.

In 2024, Rise Above Colorado kids ages 12 to 17 and found that youth who choose to abstain are the majority, not the minority. “Our focus has really been (to) change the narrative, show the data from these surveys that are legitimate that show most youth aren’t using,” MacLennan said.

Nonprofits like Rise Above Colorado and Western Colorado Area Health Education Center offer activities and events that aim to engage teens outside of classrooms and help them develop a sense of purpose. From documentary screenings and naloxone trainings to youth-built drug information resources and even mural projects, organizations seek to equip young people with science-based facts and enable them to become experts among their peer groups. Recent state-level public health campaigns, too, have focused on the facts instead of fear, in hopes of illuminating new research on substances like marijuana.

This is the final story in The Denver Post����ap three-part series examining how drug education has evolved alongside the legalization and normalization of substances like cannabis and psychedelics. Previous stories focused on how the general public has begun warming to harm reduction ideals in light of the opioid crisis and how local schools are navigating drug education in the era of drug reform.

“We have always wanted to focus on some of the root causes and what are the things that youth are doing that make life worthwhile,” MacLennan said. “So, celebrating all of that, yet at the same time making sure that youth understand the risks, the consequences. That they understand adolescent brain development and the importance of all the years that you cannot use are formative for the brain and dramatically reduce your risk of addiction later on in life.”

Today, these organizations are also filling in for state agencies that often lack the resources to lead educational campaigns.

After becoming the first state to permit recreational marijuana sales in 2014, Colorado funded several campaigns to inform both residents and tourists about its new laws as well as the health effects of cannabis use.

However, neither the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment nor the Department of Revenue currently has funding to do the same for psychedelics, which were legalized and decriminalized in 2022.

Representatives from both publicly funded agencies declined to be interviewed for this story.

One exception is the Colorado Department of Transportation, which recently to educate folks about the effects and legality of driving under the influence of psilocybin, including those who microdose.

New campaign relies on cannabis research

Some of Colorado’s early government-led cannabis campaigns targeted teens with varying levels of success.

In one notorious flop, the Colorado Department of Law and the Governor’s Office spent $2 million on an initiative called “Don’t Be A Lab Rat.” Launched in 2014, the campaign suggested that Colorado was a testing ground for the consequences of marijuana legalization — and that teens would be the test subjects if they chose to consume. (It’s worth noting that the messaging targeted adolescents under the legal age to purchase and consume cannabis, which is 21 years old.) In addition to TV and movie theater ads, campaign organizers installed human-sized rat cages around Denver, which were promptly mocked and vandalized.

The state health department — which was not involved in “Don’t Be a Lab Rat” — later developed several youth-targeted campaigns, such as Protect What����ap Next in 2015, which encouraged kids to set goals for their lives and then cautioned that marijuana use could get in the way of those; and Forward Together in 2020, aimed at inspiring teens to build more connected relationships. (While not specifically for teenagers, a 2015 campaign called Good To Know showed some effectiveness in educating pregnant women, parents and tourists about Colorado’s marijuana laws.)

The only state-led initiative that still exists today, however, is called . Rolled out in 2018, it is essentially a website that features guidance on how to consume and store cannabis responsibly, as well as information related to adolescent use and use during pregnancy.

In recent years, the state legislature has invested funds to support researching and educating the public about highly potent marijuana.

Lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 requiring the Colorado School of Public Health to perform a systematic review of the scientific research related to possible physical and mental health effects of high-potency cannabis concentrates, such as vape oils and dabs, and create a public health campaign based on the findings. The state allocated $5 million to the school — a partnership between the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado — to support this initiative over several years.

The result, called launched in 2024 with the goal of raising awareness about the risks of consuming high-concentration cannabis through podcasts, documentary shorts and social media content, including influencer partnerships. The campaign specifically highlights the potential health risks associated with consumption during adolescence and pregnancy, which researchers identified as the most critical periods for harm in their review of more than 650 scientific studies. (Researchers broadened their definition of “higher concentration cannabis” beyond concentrates to include flower with more than 10% THC and edibles with more than 5 milligrams of THC.)

While previous campaigns focused on helping people understand laws after legalization and risks of impaired driving, Tea on THC is the first to synthesize existing research about the potential health impacts, Greg Tung, associate professor of health policy at the Colorado School of Public Health, said by email.

“The campaign focuses on what����ap changed versus repeating outdated messaging,” Tung said. “Our work draws attention to the fact that cannabis products of today are very different than those in years past, and we convey the distinction between these products and what they mean for people’s health.”

For example, messaging emphasizes that cannabis flower contains much more THC now than in decades past — often between 17% to 28% compared to around 3% in 1983, — while concentrates contain as much as 95% THC. The combination of higher-concentration marijuana and a high-concentration delivery method means users can access unprecedented levels of THC at unparalleled speed, the website states.

Still, the campaign’s objective is to discourage people from starting to use cannabis unless they have a valid medical reason, so the messaging leans heavily into potential risks, even though researchers found some evidence that concentrates can benefit individuals with preexisting mental health conditions. Acknowledging the risks is important since legalization has propelled the perception that marijuana is effectively harmless, which is not the case, Tung said.

talks about short-term effects like problems with memory and concentration, a risk of psychosis and acute vomiting, as well as the potential for long-term issues like cannabis use disorder, breathing problems and increased risk of mental health conditions like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.

The Tea on THC has likely been the most visible state-funded campaign with more than 56 million viewer impressions between social media, paid media, billboards, and other forms of advertising. The website now exceeds 40,000 monthly visits, the school said, and has reached 62 of Colorado’s 64 counties.

Power to the young people

Instead of relying on top-down drug prevention initiatives, some nonprofits and local health agencies are entrusting young people to lead the way.

The city of Broomfield’s , for example, takes part in an advisory coalition that helps shape health initiatives, such as drug prevention and mental health programming. The city pays middle and high schoolers for their time and expertise, and puts them at the helm of a podcast called which touches on a range of topics, including drugs.

Rise Above Colorado recruits students from across the state to be part of its Teen Action Council, which does peer drug education in a variety of ways. The council receives training on positive social norms so members can act as ambassadors within their communities and also leads digital projects that seek to disseminate critical drug information to others their age.

In 2023, for example, the council collaborated with Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office to develop a website called intended to spread awareness about opioids and reduce the risk of misuse. It details facts that teens can share with their friends, like the majority of fake pills out there are laced with fentanyl and that ingesting just 2 milligrams can be fatal. It also offers guidance on how to use naloxone and where to find resources such as free counseling. Connect Effect was produced using $750,000 from the state’s opioid settlement funds.

Additionally, in 2017, the Teen Action Council created that provides robust information about various substances, including psilocybin, fentanyl, meth, marijuana and more. Pages include a brief history of the drug, its common names, descriptions of the high, its long and short-term effects on the brain and body, and the legal consequences of possession. Each one includes links to the information sources, so that teens who find the page can use it as a resource if they are interested in learning more.

MacLennan isn’t concerned that the website contains information that could be considered positive or focused on harm reduction.

“Hopefully, youth can understand: what is the high like, why does that potentially make it addictive, and then what are the repercussions? So that ultimately they make informed decisions,” MacLennan said. “We would rather that than, ‘Oh well, I just have to say no’ — it����ap not that black and white. We need to trust them that we’re developing skills enough so they can make good choices.”

Beyond the content, the most important part about the website is that it’s written for youth, by youth. Olli Hocker, who served on Rise Above’s 2024-25 Teen Action Council, considers it the organization’s most impactful initiative because of the service it provides.

“I know that I was looking things like that up when I was actively using,” Hocker said in a 2025 interview, proudly three years sober from using nitrous oxide. “I think it����ap really important to have accurate and nonjudgmental information and it����ap something that is hard to find other places.”

Lyndall Young, nurse and instructor at , echoed that peer-led initiatives are often the most successful she sees in the field.

Her organization acts as a resource hub, working to bring drug prevention and intervention to 15 communities across the Western Slope through a variety of initiatives both inside and outside of schools. Programming ranges from stocking naloxone vending kiosks and training educators to use the opioid reversal medication to facilitating classroom lectures about opioids and curating youth events, like documentary screenings and expert panels about substance use and addiction.

In Delta County, Young works with high schoolers to develop drug lessons that they then present to younger grades. The impact goes both ways, she said. Youth leaders become advocates and their message resonates profoundly with peer audiences.

“We’ve really found (younger kids) love the science behind it and they love it when it comes from a peer. So we really feel that has made a huge impact in our outreach to have those student stars,” Young said.

What exactly constitutes drug education has expanded over the last several years, Young said. While many think of classroom lectures, the work has broadened to become multifaceted and include wraparound services, such as housing, food and counseling support, that seek to address issues that often predate substance use and abuse. Young is heartened by this shift, as it personalizes services and education.

“One thing is not going to work for all the students. You have to hit it (from) different directions,” she said.

Risks of psychedelic use aren’t widely known; Colorado campaign hopes to change that

Education needed for young adults, too

Having access to science-based drug education isn’t just important for teenagers. Young adults also need to understand the perceived benefits and risks of any given substance so they can make informed choices once they turn 21, said public health expert Kristin Nash.

Nash is co-founder of the nonprofit , which is dedicated to addressing the need for accurate, nuanced and science-based information in the burgeoning psychedelics space. Last year, the organization used Colorado to test a new digital campaign called , aimed at educating Gen Z about psychoactive substances and concepts like “set and setting” that can impact a trip.

As psilocybin mushrooms have become more normalized, use has risen. In 2023, about 1.7 million Americans ages 18 to 29 reported using the drug in the past year, marking a 44% increase from 2019, according to .

Before You Trip’s goal was to encourage young adults to “pause, learn and reflect” with a mix of social media ads, Instagram influencer content and a website with drug information and harm-reduction resources. While the campaign highlighted psychedelics’ potential risks and documented harms, its tone was intentionally nonjudgmental and content did not advocate for abstinence.

“We know that young people are already making the decision to use and engage with these substances. We also know that ‘Just Say No’ approaches turn young people off to the message, and to be fair, we also know a lot of people do get benefit from these,” Nash said. “We need to arm them with the best information we have around risk, contradictions and harm reduction strategies.”

Before You Trip’s pilot campaign ran for roughly six weeks and reached 860,518 unique individuals aged 18 to 30 in the Denver, Boulder and Aspen metro areas, Nash said. Instagram content clocked 5.1 million impressions among that demographic and the Before You Trip website received about 66,000 visits. Those who saw the campaign said it was informative, engaging and helpful.

For Nash, the feedback was reassuring. For years, she has advocated that state governments adopt comprehensive education plans as they seek to legalize and decriminalize psychedelics. But so far, that hasn’t happened. To fill the gaps, the coalition plans to expand Before You Trip into a sustained public health education program and develop toolkits that cities, states and college campuses can use to support safer decision making among young adults.

Nash’s mission is a personal one. In 2020, her son Will died while under the influence of psilocybin at 21 years old. The honors his memory by supporting harm reduction efforts on college campuses, raising awareness about psychedelic safety and advocating for reality-based substance use education across the country.

“We can wish our kids wouldn’t use these all we want… but to me, education is the front line safety net,” Nash said. “When we downplay the risk and we fail to have those important discussions, we put people at risk and we're failing at informed consent.”

This series was reported with support of the .

An expert from Denver Health led the group in discussing which specific drugs are considered opioids and how to identify the telltale signs of an overdose, like clammy or cold skin, a limp body, and lips and fingernails that look purple or blue. The teens also learned how to administer the nasal spray, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, and then put their newfound knowledge to use practicing how exactly they would do it in the event of an emergency.

It’s scary stuff, but for many teens, it’s necessary knowledge in today’s world.

Suyash Shrestha, then a senior at Stargate School in Thornton, attended the event, but it wasn’t his first training. Shrestha spent much of his high school years trying to spread awareness about the concept of harm reduction to people his age. Harm reduction provides teenagers with honest information about drugs, along with advice for those who already use them about strategies for doing so more safely.

“Harm reduction is something that not a lot of teens or youth even think about or even know exists,” Shrestha said in an interview. “It ultimately creates that safer environment for the people who do need that information or do need those resources to come forward and get them… That����ap why we should continue pushing for that type of curriculum or education.”

Drug education, once ubiquitous in schools through the D.A.R.E. program, has struggled to find its footing in recent decades, even as changing cultural attitudes prompted marijuana legalization in many states across the country. In Colorado, a lack of consensus about approach and the logistical challenges of implementing curriculum have led to a patchwork of strategies where local control — which leaves it up to individual districts to decide the specifics of their health curricula — is the only standard.

The Denver Post is publishing a three-part series exploring why drug education has been slow to keep pace with the legalization of drugs like cannabis and psilocybin, and the ubiquity of deadlier substances like opioids. In the wake of the “Just Say No” movement of the 1980s and ’90s and a subsequent opioid epidemic, many local educators and organizations are embracing new philosophies about how to equip kids with the tools and information they need to lead successful lives.

Experts say drug education needs to be a more holistic endeavor — one that sees educators, community leaders, parents and youth working together to address the underlying causes of drug use and support healthier outcomes. For a generation of kids who have the world’s information at their fingertips, effective education must ditch fear tactics and instead rely on factual information presented honestly and transparently, they say, so that youth can make their own informed decisions.

As a member of the Rise Above Colorado’s Teen Action Council and Northglenn’s Youth Commission, Shrestha’s passion stems from hearing personal stories of Coloradans overdosing on synthetic opioids and from wanting to help anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation. After he first learned there was a medication that could literally save lives, Shrestha thought everyone deserved to know about it, including teens and other students.

Carrying naloxone was one way Shrestha saw he could potentially make a difference, and by teaching others to do so, he hoped to inspire his peers to be part of something meaningful — so that ultimately they make fewer harmful personal choices.

From ‘Just Say No’ to ‘just say nothing’

Putting trust into the hands of school students is a stark departure from historical norms. Traditionally, Americans have relied on school-based curricula and fear-based educational campaigns that aim to scare kids straight.

Stigmatizing drug and alcohol use as a black-and-white moral issue has a long legacy in the U.S., said Steve Sussman, professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, books such as and advocated bettering oneself and society by embracing purity, resisting temptation and finding a suitable partner.

The books, which were influential at the time, depicted two life paths for young men and women: They either grow up to be honest, decent citizens or, conversely, end up becoming degenerates depending on their life choices. For example, if , they would grow up to be honorable and venerable. However, if they choose to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, they would become moral and physical wrecks.

“There was nothing in between,” Sussman said. “, you’d either go the route of becoming a good mom, or you could end up going on the road to coquetry.”

Moral judgments like these became part of the school curriculum in the late 19th century, as the temperance movement gained momentum toward its goal of total abstinence. By 1901, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had successfully lobbied every state in the union to mandate its Scientific Temperance Instruction in schools. The curriculum — which it����ap worth noting was criticized by scientists at the time — asserted alcohol was “a dangerous and seductive poison” and promoted total abstinence as the only solution for mental, moral and physical well-being.

Scientific Temperance Instruction waned after Prohibition ended in 1933, but fear tactics remained a hallmark of campaigns to combat drug use and abuse.

In 1936, the film “” warned parents about the dangers of marijuana, a “frightful assassin of our youth” more threatening than opium, morphine and heroin. Three decades later, in 1963, that narrative persisted when a presidential commission to warn teenagers that “although the use of a drug may be a temporary means of escape from the world about him, in the long run these drugs will destroy him and all that he aspires to.”

The most famous effort, though, is , or Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Started in 1983 as a partnership between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Unified School District, it leveraged uniformed officers lecturing classrooms about various substances they saw on the job.

The goal was to teach kids to “Just Say No” to drugs, gangs, violence and peer pressure, echoing the country’s first lady at the time, Nancy Reagan. And it caught on quickly with the adults in power.

By 1994, D.A.R.E. was the most widely used school-based prevention program, reaching an estimated 5.5 million fifth graders in more than 60% of the nation’s school districts that year alone, The program continued to grow, and by 2009, it appeared in .

Despite its popularity, though, studies showed that D.A.R.E. wasn’t effective and that program participants were just as likely to use drugs as non-participants. In some cases, it had the opposite of its intended effect.

After developing a new curriculum in the early aughts, called Take Charge of Your Life, researchers at the University of Akron in Ohio found that seventh graders and ninth graders who went through the program from 2001 to 2006 experienced by 11th grade compared to a control group, and there was no reported change in active marijuana use. One positive effect was that seventh graders who used marijuana at the time they went through the program were less likely to continue doing so by 11th grade, the study found. In response to criticism, D.A.R.E. America retooled its curriculum for elementary and middle school students, starting in 2009.

D.A.R.E. still exists today, though curricula focus more on social-emotional learning and “helping kids learn to make healthy and safe decisions for a better life,” said regional director Dennis Osborn. Core lessons no longer include information about specific drugs, he added, though there are specialized units dedicated to vaping, fentanyl/opioids and marijuana.

About 2,000 law enforcement agencies currently participate in the program compared to around 7,500 at its height, according to Frank Pegueros, CEO of D.A.R.E America.

However controversial the content, D.A.R.E. provided the infrastructure, training and standardization necessary for drug education to proliferate widely. When that structure began to be dismantled in the 2010s, though, school-based drug education faltered, effectively leaving the generation of kids that followed to navigate the waters on their own.

“We went from ‘Just Say No’ to ‘just say nothing,’” said Rhana Hashemi, a social psychology researcher at Stanford University and founder of , which helps schools implement harm reduction education programs.

At the same time, a lethal substance was gaining traction. From 1999 to 2023, approximately 806,000 people died from an opioid overdose, with a significant increase in the number of deaths attributable to illegally made fentanyl and fentanyl analogs saturating the illicit drug supply over the course of the last decade, . Overdose fatalities involving synthetic opioids (excluding methadone) increased from 3,105 in 2013 to 72,776 in 2023, accounting for 91.7% of all opioid-related deaths that year, .

The widespread tragedy galvanized parents and politicians, who realized the pervasive “just say nothing” culture wasn’t cutting it.

Making their own decisions

The reason D.A.R.E. didn’t work, Hashemi said, is because of a cognitive dissonance between the messaging and what kids saw in real life. Warnings about the negative outcomes like overdoses, “brain rot” and addiction simply didn’t resonate. That paradox persists in prevention-focused social media campaigns today, .

“It����ap a similar thing that����ap happening now online, where our PSAs are still stuck in an abstinence-only mindset emphasizing these very serious consequences. But those messages are coming up alongside kids having fun and glamorizing their use,” Hashemi said.

That����ap why Hashemi and other experts advocate providing teenagers with honest information about drugs and safer use strategies, known as harm reduction. “I would define it as both a set of strategies and knowledge, but also a philosophical attitude in how we should address things,” she said. “Our goal is not net sum prevention of use, it����ap prevention of harms.”

For example, it����ap helpful to know that a single serving of alcohol varies depending on whether you’re drinking beer, wine or liquor. That way, if young people choose to drink, they have a better understanding of how much they’re consuming.

“Young people are going to make their own decisions,” said Marsha Rosenbaum, a sociologist and harm reduction expert. “So we need to acknowledge that even if we don’t like the decisions they’re making.”

Rosenbaum helped introduce parents to the idea of harm reduction through a series of booklets entitled “Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens, Drugs, and Drug Education,” the first of which was released in 1999. Harm reduction was something of a taboo topic in the ‘90s, she said. And in many ways, it still is today.

Luke Niforatos, executive vice president of advocacy organization , believes that harm reduction has gone too far in normalizing substance use and abuse, and that it often sends the wrong message to America’s youth. While he supports making naloxone more accessible, other safer use initiatives, like supervised needle injection sites, do little to help drug users get treatment or work toward recovery, he said.

Conversations about beverages’ specific alcohol content, marijuana edible standard dosing and onset times, and the potentially therapeutic benefit of things like cannabidiol should be the responsibility of parents — not schools — Niforatos added.

“I understand there has to be some level of teaching in the schools, but you have to be really careful about that line because, at the end of the day, it quickly traverses over the line into teaching someone how to use instead of educating them,” he said. “I think the message needs to start with ‘do not use’ and then support that message with evidence.”

Rosenbaum and other advocates dispute that characterization. Abstinence is part of harm reduction — in fact, it����ap the safest strategy of them all, she said. But presenting critical information about drugs in a nonjudgmental tone opens the door for trust building with kids and ultimately empowers them to make more informed choices, supporters say.

In a sign that public attitudes are changing, Rosenbaum turned “Safety First” into a comprehensive drug education and intervention school curriculum in 2017. It was subsequently acquired and revised by Stanford University’s REACH Lab in 2023, and  for free. With lessons about cannabis, hallucinogens, e-cigarettes, opioids and more, public health experts hope Safety First can help set a new standard for evidence-based classroom instruction. The second lesson in the curriculum provides an introduction to harm reduction.

More than 629 schools across at least 46 states have used the curriculum, including schools within 15 Colorado districts, said Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, director of the REACH Lab. She estimates Safety First has reached more than 50,000 students, though it may be more than that since the curriculum is available for free online.

In broader efforts to prevent opioid deaths, naloxone has become widely available nationwide at hospitals, schools and even vending machines without a prescription. In Colorado, social media campaigns encourage young adults to by carrying the overdose reversal medication and testing their drugs for fentanyl.

Hashemi is encouraged by this shift, but she believes harm reduction needs to expand both beyond opioids and beyond the classroom. She hopes momentum continues and drug education addresses other prominent issues teens are dealing with, such as nicotine addiction and bad trips from psychedelics. She also wants to see social media campaigns, public service announcements and other digital campaigns reach kids online, where they already spend a lot of time. (A 2024 study suggests to explore.)

“When you expose the kids themselves to harm reduction education, they run with it,” Hashemi added. “But if we do not use fentanyl as a Trojan horse to do harm reduction around all drugs, this moment is going to sort of pass us, and we’re not going to be giving kids the comprehensive education that they’ve always deserved.”

This series was reported with support of the .