Posted on 07/21/2022 1:31:20 PM PDT by Heartlander
In 2020, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize possession of drugs, including hard drugs. Portland district attorney Michael Schmidt gleefully announced that his office would immediately stop prosecuting drug possession even before the law went into effect, saying, “Past punitive drug policies and laws resulted in over-policing of diverse communities, heavy reliance on correctional facilities and a failure to promote public safety and health.” Less than two years later, Oregon is suffering through the predictable results of this experiment: overdoses are skyrocketing, violent crime is rising, and virtually nobody is getting treatment.
Voters approved the Oregon law, known as Measure 110, in 2020. The law decriminalized possession of drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and other controlled substances. Instead of a misdemeanor offense, people caught in possession of these drugs would be issued the equivalent of a traffic ticket with a small fine; all penalties would be waived if the person simply called in for a “health assessment” at an addiction-recovery center.
Criminal-justice reformers garnered support for the bill by claiming that it would reduce both addiction and alleged racial disparities in the criminal-justice system. A solitary dissenter, Paul Coelho, a physician with Salem Health Hospitals and Clinics, said, “The framers of ballot Measure 110 portray individuals with active addictions as rational actors who will naturally seek out and accept treatment for their condition. But I can assure you as a front-line provider this is simply not true. . . . Unfortunately, removing the threat of incarceration and abandoning the collaboration between law enforcement, the judiciary, probation, and the drug court system will result in a revolving door of drug abuse, treatment refusal, crime, homelessness, and ongoing costly health related expenditures for hospitalizations due to overdose, infections, and drug-induced psychosis.”
Oregon should have listened. On the issue of reducing addiction and overdoses, Oregon’s decriminalization of drug use has been a tragic failure. Overdose deaths rose by over 33 percent in Oregon in 2021, the year after the law was passed, compared with a rise of 15 percent in the rest of the United States. As for the claim that the law would provide a pathway to treatment for addicts, less than 1 percent of the people eligible for treatment under Measure 110—a paltry 136 people—ended up getting help. In fact, out of the 2,576 tickets written by police for drug possession, only 116 people called the help hotline to get the ticket waived, with the vast majority of the others choosing to pay the minimal fine instead. As Coelho warned, without the threat of incarceration and the mandatory court programs that come with an arrest, addicts seldom have any interest in getting treatment.
The impact of decriminalizing drugs did not stop with addiction and overdoses. Police in Portland report that all categories of crime jumped in reaction to Measure 110. Drug addicts need money; they got it by stealing items and reselling them, so property crimes rose. Once a drug market opens up, drug dealers move in to service it. As a result, the streets of Portland are awash in guns and drugs. With drug dealers battling for turf, gun violence increased. Portland recorded 90 homicides in 2021, shattering the old record for annual murders in the city. “We’ve seen more guns than we’ve ever seen in our investigations,” a Portland police supervisor bluntly stated. “Almost everybody is armed. . . . Criminal organizations are robbing other criminal organizations. That’s kind of our big push right now—trying to stop the gun violence and the drug violence that goes with it, because they’re hand in hand. It’s not one or the other. It’s not related to the pandemic, it’s not related to Covid, it’s because we have a criminal environment that’s tolerated and allowed to flourish here.”
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once noted that “a state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Oregon has chosen to run a novel social experiment in decriminalizing hard drugs. Let’s hope the other 49 states are paying attention to the results.
Imagine that. 🤔🤦♀️🤦♂️
Used to be such a great state for so many things growing up there.
But, very glad I didn’t move back after getting out of the military in 2010.
Saw the changes start in the late 70’s as a teenager and watched the implosion in the decades after.
Knew for sure I didn’t want to move back around 20 years ago.
3+ decades of liberal policies destroyed it.
The real story here is that they didn’t see this coming or intended the result. One is as believable as the other.
A total fail. This time.
But some other state is likely to follow along the exact same path. That next state will be full of confidence that their decriminalization plan will work just fine. Because, you see, they “have better people in charge this time”.
Yeah, I don’t think City Journal is reliable on this. I went to the Portland Oregon website and in May of 2015 the total offense count was 4933, in June of 2022 it was 5343. That’s not a dramatic rise. I mean, I may have done something wrong, but City Journal has been so deceptive about CRT that I wouldn’t trust it on crime.
“...gun violence and the drug violence that goes with it...”
Cart before the horse I’d say. (Yes, I know. There is no gun violence. Guns aren’t violent. Guns don’t cause violence themselves, though drugs might.)
Gabriel’s Horn must
Be Warming Up !
The impact of decriminalizing drugs did not stop with addiction and overdoses. Police in Portland report that all categories of crime jumped in reaction to Measure 110. Drug addicts need money; they got it by stealing items and reselling them, so property crimes rose. Once a drug market opens up, drug dealers move in to service it. As a result, the streets of Portland are awash in guns and drugs. With drug dealers battling for turf, gun violence increased. Portland recorded 90 homicides in 2021, shattering the old record for annual murders in the city. “We’ve seen more guns than we’ve ever seen in our investigations,” a Portland police supervisor bluntly stated. “Almost everybody is armed. . . . Criminal organizations are robbing other criminal organizations. That’s kind of our big push right now—trying to stop the gun violence and the drug violence that goes with it, because they’re hand in hand. It’s not one or the other. It’s not related to the pandemic, it’s not related to Covid, it’s because we have a criminal environment that’s tolerated and allowed to flourish here.”
But other than that, it's working just fine.
But then maybe they have anti-vagrancy laws and aren't as concerned about the rights of the insane and addicts to be free to move about their country and can force people into rehab.
A little history goes a long way. Turkey and China are both very strict concerning drugs because both societies collapsed when drugs were not regulated.
Chances are if drugs had never been criminalized we would not have the drug problem we have now. But that opportunity passed. Now Decriminalization is deadly to the society. Before marijuana was made illegal it was pretty innocuous because t was weak. Criminalization and market forces have caused THC content to be raised on by a large multiple and made it into a real hard drug now with all the problems of other hard drugs except your teeth won’t fall out because of it.
The end of this experiment will be death for these druggies.
I have better things to do than look up a bunch of crime stats on an armpit of a city that I have no intention of visiting but, homicides are pretty much triple what the were just a few years ago in Portland. Who could have seen that coming?
I say give ;em all they want. Deliver it 24 x 7 to wherever they want it. Takes care of the drug gangs. Won’t have a drug problem in short order. Think of it as a Darwinistic approach to the problem.
That... sounds familiar...
They deceived themselves. Any competent adult could have/would have foreseen the result. So they intended this result or they wouldn’t have created the situation.
Cui bono? The proponents of a police state, ie, the left. When chaos gets bad enough the people will come to their chosen rulers and say “make us your slaves, but keep us safe!”
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