Oregon’s drug decriminalization experiment has gone belly up after running for over three years.
On March 1, the Oregon Senate voted 21-8 in favor of making the personal possession of controlled substances a Class A misdemeanor again. Once signed by Gov. Tina Kotek, the three-year experiment with decriminalization will come to an end, and those found guilty of carrying small quantities of drugs will face up to 180 days in jail or 18 months of probation.
Measure 110 was passed in November 2020 after 59% of voters supported the initiative aimed at creating a new type of offense category for small quantities of drugs — even hard drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine — that imposed only a maximum fine of just $100.
The measure provided for a waiving of the fine if the offender called a hotline number for a health check, during which time they would be offered access to various drug addiction services. These services were to be supported via the hundreds of millions of tax dollars generated from the sale of commercial marijuana, yet financial accountability issues have reportedly been rife.
The public-health-driven initiative proved ineffective from the outset, with only 92 of 2,000 people given citations within the first year opting for the health check. Of these, only 19 opted to receive addiction services.
Downtown Portland also lost its appeal amid open drug use and the plethora of paraphernalia littering the sidewalks, as local journalist Nancy Rommelmann explained on X.
“People stopped going downtown, both because of the perception of danger and because it was too sad, seeing hundreds of people dope-sick, smoking fentanyl under blankets, shooting up in the park, stepping over used syringes and the foil and straws distributed free by advocates of harm reduction,” she wrote in a post.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Downtown Dallas has been suffering from its share of drug crime amid an ongoing police shortage of roughly 1,000 officers, per a City analysis.
The impact of the police shortage has been felt in Downtown Dallas, which regularly clocks far more drug crime than Fort Worth’s downtown area. A dedicated neighborhood police unit and private security guards work together to patrol the latter. According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, drug violations increased by 43% in the city later last year.
Rommelmann shared with The Dallas Express her insight into why Oregonians voted for Measure 110 in 2020.
“People really wanted to believe they were doing the right thing, and I think that they thought they were giving addicts a softer landing by removing the possibility of incarceration,” she said. “But what happened was … it was rolled out so terribly, they removed any penalties, but they didn’t help the people that they pledged to help.”
She referred to one of her interviewees — a person working with drug addicts — who likened Measure 110 to “trying to build the plane as they flew it.”
“The law, the money, [they] created the capacity to do the good, but we didn’t know how to do that yet. We didn’t know how to implement the money,” she said.
Moreover, the absence of carceral punishment removed an essential incentivizing mechanism for people to get help with their drug addiction, according to Rommelmann.
“You can get treatment through the jail system, or at least you’re being kept away from drugs,” she said.
This idea was seconded by Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor of psychiatry.
“Even as it destroys your life, fentanyl use feels so good in the short term that many people won’t try to give it up without the external pressure that Measure 110 eliminated,” suggested Humphreys, per The Washington Post.
Opioids overall were to blame for 472 overdose deaths in Oregon in 2020, which surged to 956 in 2022 before dropping down to 628 in 2023, according to state data.
Whatever its shortcomings, most have suggested that Oregon’s drug decriminalization effort has been a total bust.
“Unfortunately, in the history of drug policy, Oregon’s Measure 110 will go down in the lessons learned — rather than the lasting innovations — category,” said Brandon del Pozo, a former police officer who is now a researcher at Brown University, according to The Washington Post.
As covered by The Dallas Express, there have been a few local municipal efforts to decriminalize marijuana recently. However, the approval of ordinances to do so in Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin, and Denton has placed city leaders in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s crosshairs. He announced plans to sue these five Texas cities last month for allegedly adopting policies that violate the Texas Local Government Code.
