In the November 2020 election, Oregon approved a historic ballot initiative that decriminalized small amounts of hard drugs, like meth, heroin, and crack. Under Measure 110, people caught with drugs were to be cited with a $100 fine, similar to a traffic ticket, that could be cleared by seeking treatment services, which would be expanded with millions in revenue from the state's taxation of recreational marijuana sales. Winning nearly 60 percent support, the initiative promised to treat drug use and addiction as a public-health problem, not a criminal matter - adopting the logic that incarceration does little to curb the harms of substance abuse.
The Oregon experiment was unique in America, where on any given day 350,000 people - roughly the equivalent of the population of Cleveland - are locked up on drug offenses, and drug-possession arrests occur at a clip of one every 23 seconds. And the passage of Measure 110 was met with acclaim from reformers like Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, who celebrated the "paradigm-shifting" victory as perhaps "the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date," while predicting Oregon would "serve as a model" for the nation.
Instead, three years later, Measure 110 now stands as a cautionary tale about the failure to match bold policy reform with competent administration. Last week, the Oregon state legislature completed an about-face in the state's novel approach to hard drugs - voting to recriminalize possession as a misdemeanor, with penalties of up to six months in jail. The vote was not close: The state House approved the bill 51-7, the state Senate piled on 21-8. The legislation is now awaiting the signature of Gov. Tina Kotek (D), who has signaled a willingness to sign it.
Score one for the Drug War.
The saying goes that "failure is an orphan." But the collapse of Oregon's bold experiment in drug decriminalization has many fathers. Some dynamics were outside of the easy control of local policymakers, including a rising tide of homelessness; the Covid-19 pandemic's hollowing out center-city commercial life; and the flood of dirt-cheap fentanyl, leading to a scourge of street overdose deaths.
But the state bureaucracy also fumbled the implementation of Measure 110, attempting to delay and divert drug-treatment funding; failing to train law enforcement on steering drug users toward rehabilitation; and relying on a cumbersome call center that proved all-but feckless at moving people in out of the grip of addiction and into treatment.
As blocks of beleaguered downtown Portland got overrun by open-air drug markets and unhoused people smoking and shooting drugs without consequence, Measure 110 became an attractive scapegoat for the explosion of urban blight.
Correlation is not, in fact, causation. Research from Portland State University has shown Measure 110 had "no impact" on violent crime and produced at most a "slight uptick" in property crime. Overdose deaths have indeed increased in Oregon - but the trajectory was rising before Measure 110's passage, and Oregon's rates are "no different from similar states," the academics write.
But politics are driven by perception. And by last spring, polling had turned decisively against the experiment, with 63 percent of voters supporting a return to criminal penalties for drug possession. This year, as deep-pocketed state business leaders threatened to launch a punitive recriminalization ballot measure, Oregon's Democratic-led legislature snapped to action to put its imprint on reform.
The bill now on the governor's desk would empower police to again arrest and incarcerate repeat, low-level drug users. Under the bill, counties can choose to offer a "deflection" program for arrestees who agree to enter treatment, enabling them to avoid jail time and a criminal record. The legislation also offers more than $200 million in new funding for drug courts and treatment clinics, while maintaining the funding mechanism from Measure 110, steering marijuana tax revenue into rehabilitation.
Drug reformers are furious about the squandered opportunity to model a new approach for the country. "It is Oregon leaders that didn't work," says Frederique of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Their chronic underfunding of affordable housing, effective addiction services, and accessible health care are to blame for the heartbreaking public suffering seen in Oregon's streets." Frederique insists there "is not a shred of evidence" that Measure 110 increased homelessness, crime, or overdose rates. And she sees the recriminalization bill as "a false promise" of a fix, meant to distract from political "incompetence."
In retrospect, the key driver of Measure 110's political demise was that it entrusted implementation of a radical drug-policy experiment to rigid state agencies and police bureaus that were not invested in - or even hostile to - its success.
Cant say im shocked, this was a complete failure and proves mass drug decriminalization is near impossible to implement successfully...
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