In 2020, Oregon made a bold step forward in its policies toward drugs and their users. Ballot Measure 110, which decriminalized the possession of drugs and increased funding for recovery centers using new taxes on legal marijuana, passed with nearly 60% of the popular vote.
According to the Portland Observer, the law would reduce the arrest rates of black Oregonians by 94%. The law was modeled after similar initiatives in the country of Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and was the most radical initiative in the country.
Now, only four years later, the Oregon State Legislature has rolled back these reforms with House Bill 4002 (HB4002). This new law reinstates a penalty for drug possession, neutering the most radical promise of Measure 110 and setting the state back in its efforts to bring an end to the war on drugs.
Critics of the original Measure pointed to the skyrocketing rate of overdoses in the state. Overdoses in Oregon—especially those related to opioids and fentanyl—continue to increase year after year. This is a problem across the entire country and has fueled massive backlash from both Conservatives and Republicans who claim that these “soft on crime” policies simply invite more drugs into the cities that decriminalize them.
But what happened here? Why did this measure fail when similar efforts in countries like Portugal succeed?
First, we must face the fact that Portugal has a much more robust public health infrastructure already in place. Portugal—and most of the developed world for that matter—has publicly funded and universal health care. Its networks of treatment centers are taken care of via tax dollars and can consistently funnel those struggling with addiction through those networks. While Portugal’s system did falter in times like the pandemic, it continues to be a pillar of the nation’s treatment plan to this day.
This was an observation made by Oregonian legislators and activists who took a trip to Portugal in 2023.
Oregon, on the other hand, has a woefully underfunded health system. While the original text of Measure 110 established the Drug Treatment and Recovery Services Fund—which received money raised through taxes on Oregon’s legal marijuana—the projects designed to help drug addicts off the streets were rarely constructed or maintained.
An analysis done by the Lund Report—published just a month after the House voted to recriminalize—stated that the state needed to spend $170 million more annually if it wanted to meet its needs for behavioral health beds in the state. This much would be needed just to have the capacity to seat all of the patients struggling—let alone actually funnel them through treatment.
The Oregon Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission—a state institution—found a 49% gap in substance use disorder services needed by residents of the state and that only one in five healthcare providers offered harm reduction services.
Overall, the picture becomes clearer the deeper you dig. Decriminalization didn’t fail on its own merits. It failed because the main mechanism promised to pull down the overdose rate was woefully underfunded—perhaps even purposefully kneecapped and sabotaged. Of course, the state couldn’t keep up with this kind of funding deficit.
Furthermore, ending this experiment after only four years is simply too soon. Drug use and overdose in the state is up, yes, but it’s up in the entire country. Let’s be clear, the current opioid and fentanyl crisis is the direct fallout of the overprescription of opioids in the 1990s. It’s a problem we’ve been dealing with for decades, and one that was exacerbated in the middle of this law’s lifespan due to the pandemic.
Portugal has had almost 30 years to iron out the kinks in its system. For them, legalization took place in 1990. The prescription drug lobby also didn’t have its fangs stuck into the nation’s health care system like it did here. These robust systems of care take longer than just four years to build, and caving to shortsighted anger and conservative-astroturfed outrage is little more than cowardice on the part of the legislature.
This repeal wasn’t put to a vote the same way that the original measure was. Despite the fact that 56% of Oregonians who responded to polls said they wanted the law repealed in a survey by Emerson College Polling, we’ll never truly know if such an outlook would have held up if it was put to another vote.
The options given to those arrested for drug possession now—under the new statutes set out by HB 4002—are treatment or prison time. This is a coercive choice. You could choose jail—where you will be subject to horrible conditions and woefully inadequate healthcare, given a criminal record and perhaps pushed further into a life of crime where you would not have ended up before.
Alternatively, you can choose to go into that same system of underfunded, unconstructed and unequipped network of treatment centers described above. Those struggling with drug addiction are once again put between the sword and the wall, forced back into the margins. On top of that, any progress made in lowering the arrest rates of black Oregonians is now back exactly where they started. Almost any and all progress made by the original measure has been made completely moot.
What are we doing—as a State and as a society—when we renege on progress just because the road is rocky? Thanks to a fear mongering campaign by Republicans run nationwide—one that shadow boxes against fictionalized representations of transnational drug trafficking cartels, pumping fentanyl into the good working people of America and bashes the cities and states that try to move forward and break from the war on drugs—we are now back at square one.
With actions like these, we prove—as a society—that our progressive policies cannot be adequately protected by the current electoral system. We also prove, quite decisively, that we don’t truly care about what would help those put at risk by drugs. If we did, we would decriminalize drugs and increase funding for our healthcare services.
