As of Sunday, it is again illegal to possess small amounts of hard drugs in Oregon. A first-in-the-nation law decriminalizing drugs expired, as communities across the U.S. struggle to curb fentanyl use and overdose deaths, reports the Washington Post. Sunday marked the end of an experiment that drug-reform advocates called a pioneering and progressive measure to better help people. Oregon legislators reassessed Measure 110 this year and decided to make it a misdemeanor again to possess a minor amount of drugs — essentially anything besides marijuana. Selling and manufacturing illicit drugs was and is still illegal in Oregon. Those who supported the measure said it sought to help instead of simply handcuff, by offering services as opposed to the stigma of an arrest, which can make it harder to find a job or a place to live. The most vocal advocate was the Drug Policy Alliance, which spent more than $4 million on the campaign.
The measure required officers to hand out $100 citations instead of jail time, and that citation could be waived if the person called a state-funded hotline and enrolled in an assessment for treatment. Those services were funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in marijuana tax revenue. (Marijuana has been legal in Oregon since 2015.) The alliance and others used Portugal, which decriminalized certain hard drugs in 2001, as a model — despite Portugal mulling changes of its own to the law. The Oregon campaign emphasized a study showing that Black and Native American people were more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than White people and must deal with the consequences for decades. The vote came in November 2020 during a wave of calls for criminal justice restructuring after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer. The measure passed with support from about 60 percent of voters.
Comments