Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once remarked that “a state, if its citizens so desire, can serve as a laboratory; and try new social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. Oregon has decided to conduct a new social experiment to decriminalize hard drugs. Let us hope that the other 49 States are paying attention to the results. Under Oregon`s new decriminalization measure, people caught with small amounts of street drugs face a choice: pay a $100 fee or undergo an addiction assessment. File photo “I look forward to helping Oregon law enforcement see this tool as a bridge to recovery,” Holton said. “That`s what it has to be. Yet those who have contributed to this system change are well aware that the nation will be watching closely what hopes to become a model for other states that want to stop arresting and prosecuting people with substance use disorders. The effects of drug decriminalization did not stop at addiction and overdose. The Portland Police Department reports that all categories of crime have skyrocketed in response to Measure 110. Drug addicts need money; They got it by stealing and reselling items, so property crimes increased.

As soon as a drug market opens, drug traffickers set up shop to serve it. As a result, Portland`s streets are flooded with guns and drugs. With drug traffickers fighting for territory, gun violence has increased. Portland recorded 90 murders in 2021, breaking the old record for annual murders in the city. “We`ve seen more guns than we`ve ever seen in our investigation,” a Portland police chief said bluntly. “Almost everyone is armed. Criminal organizations steal from other criminal organizations. That`s our big effort right now – to try to stop gun violence and the drug-related violence that comes with it, because they go hand in hand.

It is neither. It has nothing to do with the pandemic, it has nothing to do with Covid, it`s because we have a criminal environment that is tolerated and allowed to thrive here. On Feb. 1, a major experiment began in Oregon: the state decriminalized small amounts of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. In the November election, voters passed measure 110 by a margin of 16 points. As part of the passage of Oregon Poll 110, which went into effect on February 1, 2021, personal possession of psilocybin and psilocybin mushrooms (also known as “magic mushrooms”) was decriminalized. [30] Tera says the first numbers in Measure 110 do not reflect what the law will ultimately provide to Oregon residents. She also says they could be a partial sign of success. “We`re already hearing about people coming to Oregon to use them because they know they can take drugs and sleep outside and there`s nothing police can do about it,” said a frustrated Oregon official who asked not to be named because of his work in drug prohibition. The nonprofit strives to end drug-related criminalization and create alternative responses to the way we treat drugs. “I think the biggest unintended consequence is that overdose rates are going to skyrocket,” Marshall says.

“There will be more people on the streets using drugs, and no mechanism to interrupt or stop them.” To make matters worse, Oregon cannot receive the equivalent of federal Medicaid money, a major source of funding for states, to expand treatment under Measure 110 because it uses tax revenue from the legal sale of marijuana, which the federal government still classifies as an illegal Schedule 1 drug. “Well, if you were caught with a small amount of drugs, you`d get a quote and it would look like a speeding ticket,” said Tera, executive director of the Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance. A 23-year-old man sits on the sidewalk in downtown Portland, preparing what he says, heroin, June 25, 2021. Measure 110, a drug treatment and recovery act, aims to connect drug users with treatment and recovery services, including housing assistance, rather than being imprisoned for possession of small amounts of drugs. Seaman was previously a physician at the Multnomah County Jail in Portland. He says he has often seen a cycle with patients who must have had a cold turkey in prison: they go through rehabilitation in an unfamiliar environment, they are traumatized, and when they are released, they seek medication to heal themselves. The risk of overdose among opioid users is 129 times higher in the first two weeks after their release from prison.