JK LOL: Oregon May Recriminalize Drugs

By A.J. Firstman | Last updated on March 05, 2024

Oregon’s bipartisan Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response met on the last Tuesday in February to vote on a bill simply known as House Bill 4002. The committee voted 10-2 in favor of the bill, with all of the committee members broadly aligned on the problem HB4002 sought to fix, if not the specifics of the solutions it proposed. It was an unusual display of bipartisan cooperation, made all the more unusual by the purpose of HB4002: to recriminalize hard drugs.

Measure 110

In November 2020, Oregon voters passed referendum Measure 110, also known as the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act. Its premise was simple: Drug addiction and overdoses are serious problems, and a health-based approach that emphasizes and expands access to treatment is more humane, effective, and cost-effective than criminalizing and incarcerating addicts. Measure 110 sought to adjust the state’s approach to addiction.

Before Measure 110 was codified and put into force, Oregon’s drug laws were similar to the rest of the country’s. Simple possession of hard drugs like cocaine, heroin, or fentanyl was considered either a felony or a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and fines of up to $6,250. Measure 110 reclassified personal non-commercial possession of controlled substances as a Class E violation, which came with a maximum fine of $100. Violators who received citations for simple possession were also given the opportunity to have the charges dismissed if they obtained a treatment needs screening within 45 days of the citation.

Measure 110 also included provisions requiring the state to establish a series of drug treatment facilities and programs – what the Oregonian Senate Bill 755 called "Behavioral Resource Networks (BHRNs)" – to provide low-barrier substance use disorder treatment for anyone who needed it. Funding would come from a combination of the state’s marijuana tax revenues, state prison savings, and other sources of revenue, as needed.

There was plenty of hope that Measure 110 would have a positive effect on the state and its residents. Decriminalization meant that being caught with a small bag of drugs wouldn’t result in life-ruining charges. Emphasizing treatment would prevent overdoses and give addicts the chance to address their issues and go back to living normal lives. It would be expensive, sure, but the state planned on using at least $125 million annually from its marijuana tax revenues, and the lack of new drug convictions meant the Oregon Department of Corrections wouldn’t need all of its $1 billion annual budget.

The proponents of Measure 110 also had one big, shining example to point at whenever anyone questioned their logic: Portugal. If it worked in Portugal, of course it would work here, right?

What’s Portuguese for "Ehhh"?

In the late 1990s Portugal experienced a heroin epidemic like nothing it had seen before. Overdose deaths rose from near-zero to levels of national concern. Users sharing dirty needles made HIV/AIDS and other bloodborne illnesses spread like wildfire, sickening and killing people across the country. Attempts to address the crisis were ineffectual, at best, and it was only getting worse. Something had to be done, but what?

The answer came in 2001 when the Portuguese government instituted sweeping reforms that overhauled the way the country dealt with drugs and addiction. Rather than further embrace the American war on drugs-inspired model of zero-tolerance drug enforcement, Portugal opted for a more humane approach.

Under the new system, Portuguese police would put drug users in touch with drug counselors instead of handcuffs. Drug addicts would be given easy access to affordable, sometimes free treatment instead of lengthy sentences. Police would spend their time trying to break up major drug gangs, disrupt open-air markets, and arrest drug users for committing crimes like theft, rather than simple possession.

The Portuguese approach worked. Overdose deaths declined dramatically, as did the incidence of HIV/AIDS and other diseases linked to dirty needles. All the naysayers who predicted a dramatic upsurge in drug use were proven wrong … for a while.

Similar Approach, Similar Failings

Portugal’s experiment – as it was originally designed – worked like a charm. The fully-funded, fully staffed centralized treatment system was both efficient and effective, often able to place people seeking treatment into facilities within a matter of days. And then 2012 rolled around.

Economic realities and ideological pushes for austerity hit the centralized Portuguese treatment system pretty hard. Funding cuts tore into the system and ate away at everything that made it work as intended. Before long the wait for treatment grew from days to weeks. The quality of care fell along with the number of beds. And, sadly, those numbers that Portugal was so proud of started to rise.

Oregon probably should have paid more attention to the Portuguese experiment. Portugal’s system still beats America’s in terms of statistics, outcomes, efficacy, and efficiency by almost an order of magnitude, but it’s still fallen far from its peak.

It turns out that all the best theory in the world doesn’t mean anything in the face of poor execution.

Good Theory vs. Poor Execution

Oregon’s Measure 110 promised a combination of decriminalization and a greatly expanded network of drug treatment centers all across the state. It worked for Portugal, right? But here’s the difference: Portugal actually built its network.

The expansion of affordable, easily accessible drug treatment as promised by Measure 110 hasn’t materialized. You can blame any number of factors: cost, zoning laws, graft, poor planning, staffing challenges, and construction delays, but the fact remains that Oregon is at least 3,000 beds short of accommodating the number of people who need drug treatment right now.

As if that weren’t enough, the plans made by and for Measure 110 were devised before the fentanyl crisis hit Oregon in earnest. There are now thousands of new users – many of whom are unhoused – who need help that Oregon isn’t prepared to provide. Now, Oregon is facing staggering statistics like a jump of over 40% in overdose deaths from 2022 to 2023, and it seems like there’s little they can do.

Back Behind Bars

Enter HB 4002.

The fact that this bill has such wide bipartisan support says a lot about the conditions on the ground in Oregon. Most Oregonians are united under the idea that decriminalization and treatment are preferable to being jailed and effectively made unemployable, but the state isn’t in a place where they can adequately care for everyone who needs it.

In the current bill, there are multiple opportunities for drug users to dodge criminal consequences and have their records automatically expunged if they opt into treatment. One of the points of contention has been the fact that something like 90% of people who receive drug citations never even bother to show up at court, let alone pursue treatment, so this should theoretically push more users to get the treatment they need.

The bill itself has been pushed as a way to prioritize public health strategies while also giving law enforcement the power to combat public drug use – the latter of which has drawn some scrutiny from local activists who are concerned about the policy’s inevitably outsized impact on Oregonians of color.

One can only hope that Oregon finds the answers to all of these questions.

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