Not another "war on drugs"
Oregon's HB 4002 will recriminalize psychedelics for personal possession
In 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, which decriminalized personal possession of all outlawed drugs. It was a bold move inspired by similar models in Lisbon and Vancouver, Canada, both of which have been effective.
Unlike those cities, however, Oregon didn’t have the social services in place necessary for successful decriminalization. Shelter for the unhoused remain stunted, even four years later (though here in Portland, officials finally seem to have realized their errors). Needle sharing, detox, and addiction clinics were extremely underfunded, and unprepared to handle the surge of people needing their services. Of course, the pandemic didn’t help, but the blame can’t only fall there.
Oregon’s history of drug enforcement has been more progressive than other states:
The state decriminalized marijuana in 1973 as Nixon’s war on drugs raged
As Reagan picked up where Nixon left off, Oregon residents couldn’t go to prison for simple drug possession
Diversion programs have been successfully used since the eighties
Measure 110 was predominantly funded by activists from other states, however. Once it passed, enrollment in the diversion programs slowed while public use and overdoses increased. Unlike in Lisbon and Vancouver, Oregon was left flat-footed.
And so Measure 110 looks like it will be repealed.
Measure 110 failed because its advocates misunderstood addiction, and also because they misunderstood the culture and political history of Oregon. Both of these misunderstandings should be of keen interest to other states and municipalities contending with the fentanyl crisis, and to the federal government. An appreciation of what went wrong can help other places land on a drug policy that is both humane and effective, instead of veering toward one extreme or another.
While Measure 110 passed with 58% of voter support in 2020, 64% of respondents now believe one or all of the measures involved need to be rolled back. While all outlawed drugs were named in the ballot measure, the emphasis for addiction treatment was on fentanyl, heroin, and other opioids.
As The Atlantic reported above, we need to avoid veering toward any extreme. Tragically, that’s what state legislators appear to do exactly that by outlawing psychedelics.
By treating all drugs as an undifferentiated category, Oregon is set to deliver a major blow to advocates of psychedelic use who don’t want to see expensive clinics and tightly controlled environments be the only legal point of access. While regulated and supervised models for using psychedelics are showing growing promise for treating mental illness, decriminalized use allows for a much wider spectrum of user motivations — many of which have occurred for millennia — no less deserving of legal protection, from recreational and spiritual to the simple pleasure of spicing up a museum visit with a small handful of mushrooms.
Even more tragically, we’ve been here before.
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