The push is on to get Canada back to common sense when it comes to the worsening drug culture in our cities.
On May 7, the federal Liberal government approved the B.C. NDP government’s request to recriminalize the possession of hard drugs.
And in recent weeks, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have both denounced how the City of Toronto wants to one-up B.C. and decriminalize hard drugs not just for adults but minors as well.
When Ford speaks out against the Toronto proposal, he now references Oregon as an example of why we shouldn’t go down that path. Let’s take a look at what happened in the northwestern American state and why, as Ford rightly says, Oregon’s experience is a cautionary tale for other jurisdictions.
Oregon is a very liberal state. Its voters have consistently elected Democratic governors for the past 40 years. Portland, the state’s largest city, is lampooned for its far-left culture, including as the subject of the comedy series “Portlandia.”
In 2015, Oregon became one of the first states to legalize marijuana, doing so by ballot initiative. The thinking at the time was that progressive states were only beginning a wave of drug decriminalization measures. After marijuana was legalized, the push to be more legally tolerant towards harder drugs began.
Activists targeted Oregon as their testing ground, no doubt thinking that the state’s liberal politics would make it easier to push a law through. This proved correct—at least at first.
The Drug Policy Alliance—a New York City not-for-profit organization that is funded in part by prominent left-wing billionaire George Soros—led the push for Oregon’s Measure 110. This was a ballot initiative put to Oregon voters in November 2020.
The measure proposed making personal possession of hard drugs a minor infraction that results in a maximum US$100 fine, as opposed to potential jail time. If offenders didn’t wish to pay the fine, they could opt for treatment and recovery programs funded by state marijuana tax revenue.
The measure passed with 58 percent in support and 42 percent opposed. The responses differed by region, with populous Portland’s 75 percent support helping to influence the outcome.
It seemed that drug activists were getting what they wanted and that Oregon would be the first of many to embrace this approach. After all, this is what happened after Washington state legalized marijuana in 2012. Other states followed in legalizing marijuana and the sky didn’t fall.
But the sky did fall in Oregon. Or close to it. Once Measure 110 came to pass, chaos overtook many city streets.
The public use of hard drugs grew rapidly. “Yearly fentanyl overdose deaths in Oregon grew by an estimated 1,500% since before the pandemic, by far the largest increase in the United States, federal data show,” explains a story in The Seattle Times from this February.
Meanwhile, public disorder and violence surged. During public deputations reviewing Measure 110, residents lamented that it became common to see people behaving violently and erratically in the streets. One father complained that kids couldn’t go inside bus shelters anymore while awaiting transit because they were being used for shooting up in.
This is why the state revised Measure 110 earlier this year. Hard drug possession has been criminalized again, carrying a jail term of up to six months. This can be avoided though if the person agrees to treatment.
The main thing we can learn from Oregon’s experiment is that we shouldn’t do it. It really is that simple.
It’s bizarre that drug activists won’t acknowledge that marijuana and hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl are profoundly different. You just can’t lump them all into the same ideology.
While we generally consider the smoking of pot to be a matter of personal discretion, when it comes to drugs like fentanyl, society can and should send a message that it’s a really bad idea to do it and aggressively campaign against it.
Those in Canada still pushing for more leniency need to realize they’re out of touch and disconnected from reality. Even the original Measure 110 proposed fining people and sending them to treatment. Yet a lot of Canadian hard drug decriminalization activists think even that approach is too tough.
Toronto politicians and health bureaucrats need to get with the program. Same for any other jurisdictions thinking of decriminalizing hard drugs.
The Oregon model, just like the B.C. model, is the evidence they can’t ignore.
