Lawmakers in Oregon are moving to recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs after it faced rampant public drug use and saw overdose-related deaths more than triple.
‘It’s the compromise path, but also the best policy that we can come up with to make sure that we are continuing to keep communities safe and save lives,’ State Senator Kate Lieber, a Democrat and one of the bill’s authors, said.
The state became the first in the country to decriminalize the possession of all drugs including heroin and cocaine in 2020.
But residents have since demanded for politicians to take action on the open-air drug markets that surfaced and fueled a homelessness crisis. Oregon has struggled to deal with the crisis as photos and video show tent cities and rampant public drug use.
Opioid deaths in Oregon more than tripled from 280, before the de-criminalization of drugs was voted in, to 955 in 2022.
The sweeping new bill will recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as a low-level misdemeanor.
The proposal would enable police to confiscate them and crack down on their use on sidewalks and in parks, its authors said.
The measure’s details have yet to be finalized, but ‘personal use’ possession of illegal drugs would become a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail or a $1,250 fine. It would not affect Oregon’s legalization of cannabis or psychedelic mushrooms.
That is in stark contrast to how voters felt in 2020 when they passed the pioneering decriminalization law, Measure 110, with 58 percent support.
Democratic legislators who championed the measure as a way to treat addiction as a public health matter, not a crime, are now battling one of the nation’s largest spikes in overdose deaths, intensifying pressure from Republicans and growing calls from a well-funded campaign group to overhaul it.
Hellbound and Down 