Oregon Ends Its 3-Year Experiment With Legalizing Hard Drugs

An anti-fentanyl advertisment on a sidewalk in downtown Vancouver on April 11, 2017. The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward

Hard drugs are once again illegal in Oregon, as a new law ends a failed experiment in decriminalization.

On Sept 1, the bipartisan House Bill 4002 reintroduced penalties for drug possession.

“This ends the legalization of hard drugs which had prevented law enforcement from intervening, even when they were being consumed quite blatantly in public places,” Rep. Kevin Mannix, a Republican cosponsor of the bill, wrote in a Sept. 2 statement.

The bill also toughened penalties for drug traffickers to prevent them from profiting from addiction, he said.

Overdoses Soar

The law reversed Ballot Measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, which voters narrowly approved in 2020 and was intended to address the state’s drug addiction problem.

That measure decriminalized user possession of hard drugs—including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin—making it a noncriminal violation on par with a traffic ticket. It offered users treatment options funded by directing hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s cannabis tax revenue toward addiction services.

But after the measure took effect, drug use and overdoses skyrocketed while treatment programs were slow to materialize.

“Since [the measure’s] implementation, overdoses rose 61 percent compared to 13 percent nationally,” Oregon House Republicans said in a September 2023 statement.

Fentanyl, a drug that is 50 times stronger than heroin, surpassed methamphetamine as the drug most frequently involved in overdose deaths in Oregon. For all ages, fentanyl overdoses surged by nearly 600 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to the Oregon Health Authority. And fentanyl killed Oregon’s teenagers at a rate higher than any other state’s.

The increase in overdoses “is the direct result of Oregon enabling drug use with Measure 110,” Oregon House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich, a retired Portland police sergeant, said in a February statement.

In the 15 months after the measure’s implementation, only a few dozen people had called the state’s 24-hour addiction help hotline.

“Tens of millions of dollars [were] distributed to unaccountable NGOs, and most notoriously a $10,000 per call hotline that cannot point to any callers seeking treatment, wrote Helfrich in an Aug. 13 statement.

Helfrich called the measure a “disaster” as he pushed for its repeal in the 2024 legislative session.

Now, law enforcement is reinstating penalties for drug use and legislators are seeking to claw back money not yet spent for treatment, Helfrich said.

Meanwhile, the repeal of Measure 110 has become a campaign issue.

Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat who is challenging first-term Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District, highlighted her role in passing the bipartisan HB 4002 in a campaign ad released at the end of August. Bynum provides a voiceover for the ad, which depicts police officers, fentanyl, and a handcuffed prisoner.

“In the Oregon state Legislature, I worked to pass bipartisan legislation to re-criminalize fentanyl and other dangerous drugs,” she says in the advertisement. “In Congress, I will work with local enforcement to keep us safe and fight to ensure our communities have the resources they need.”

But not everyone is embracing the new law.

The Portland Health Justice and Recovery Alliance, which testified in opposition to HB 4002, continues to claim it will result in racial inequity.

“The state’s own analysis predicts that [the law] will funnel at least 1,333 more people into the criminal legal system, with disproportionate impacts on black and Latinx Oregonians,” it stated on social media on Sept. 1.

The ACLU of Portland shared these concerns.

“Black Oregonians already receive drug citations at double their population rate despite comparable drug use rates to white Oregonians, and independent data shows that Portland has the fifth worst arrest disparities in the nation, with police arresting black people at a per capita rate 4.3 times higher than white people,” Portland ACLU wrote on its website.

The Rubber Hits the Road

The new law, HB 4002, makes “personal use possession” a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

It encourages law enforcement agencies to offer “deflection” programs that would divert people to addiction and mental health services instead of the criminal justice system.

Users must complete a behavioral health screening and participate in a deflection program within 30 days in order to avoid penalties. If they fail to follow through, they will not be eligible for deflection and could be arrested if caught with drugs again within the same 30-day window.

According to a directive shared with The Epoch Times by Portland Police Chief Bob Day, officers can offer deflection to adults who are in possession of small amounts of controlled drugs only if they have no other charges, warrants, or holds and are medically stable and nonviolent.

During an Aug. 30 press conference, Day predicted that the number of people who qualify for deflection would be slim compared with the number of arrests.

On Sunday, Sept. 1, the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Bike Squad conducted its first HB 4002 drug mission in and around downtown Portland. Officers made four arrests, issued one citation, and qualified two individuals for deflection.

But the rollout of the new law is already hitting speed bumps.

According to the police directive, officers can wait only 30 minutes for deflection intake personnel to arrive. After that, they must take suspects to jail.

In addition, Day said during a Sept 2 press conference that officers will also take suspects to jail during the hours when intake personnel are not available. Essentially, that means deflection will be offered only Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. until more deflection services are available.

In addition, a Portland facility that was expected to provide deflection services will not be ready until October, weeks later than planned.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler told Multnomah County officials at an Aug. 27 meeting that if the county does not open a drop-off center by the end of October, he will “immediately reevaluate” the city’s participation in the county’s deflection plan.