Tag: oregon

Oregon lawmakers now want to recriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs after facing rampant public drug use

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.

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FBI arrests Oregon trans ‘Nazi’ who threatened blacks, Jews

The FBI arrested a trans-identified Oregon woman on Friday who allegedly made a series of credible violent threats towards minority groups, including Jews, black people, and immigrants.

Elizabeth Ballesteros West, 56, of Cottage Grove, has been taken into custody and is being held at the Lane County Jail, according to the Oregonian.

Court records show that authorities were first alerted to West in September when she had posted on a transgender women’s support group page on Facebook claiming that she was being bullied by “transphobic” coworkers, and saying that she had reached “the end of my rope.”

West’s social media posts included a vow to carry out acts of violence and included photos of firearms, per the affidavit.

It also reported that West said in a post that she will “have to go out in a blaze of glory” and will “have to do what I have to do and pray for the gods to forgive me.”

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Field trip: inside America’s first magic mushroom school

At a forest facility in Oregon, the first US state to allow supervised use of the drug, students work toward becoming licensed trip facilitator.

  • Inside a spacious and light-filled retreat in the forest outside Portland, 30 students sat gazing into each other’s eyes.

A heavy silence filled the room, save for the occasional creaking chair. A soft voice urged the group to envision the pain and joy their fellow students had experienced during their lives, to view them as a friend, a child, a teacher. Some broke into grins, others teared up.

“We never get the opportunity to just look at somebody,” the instructor said.

The intense exercise was a fitting start to the day for students preparing for unconventional careers as facilitators in Oregon’s groundbreaking new psilocybin program.

The state is the first in the US to allow supervised use of the psychedelic for adults 21 and older. In a few months, the students, who include midwives, educators and retirees, could support people through a magic mushroom experience at one of Oregon’s 19 service centers.

But first, they’ll need to complete a program like the one taking place at InnerTrek – the first government-recognized licensed and operating training program in the world, according to staff. After they complete the training, they can go on to apply for their licenses with the state.

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Oregon man who dismembered handymen, fed them to pigs, serving 50-year sentence in women’s prison after identifying as trans

A trans-identified male convicted of murdering and dismembering two handymen and then feeding them to his pigs has been serving his 50-year sentence in a women’s correctional facility in Oregon.

Susan Monica, born Steven Buchanan, was sentenced to serve at least 50 years in prison in 2015 after being found guilty of murder and abusing the corpses of two handymen, 59-year-old Stephen Delicino in 2012 and 56-year-old Robert Haney in 2013, according to an Oregon Live report from that time.

According to the Willamette Week, Monica is serving the sentence out at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, located around 16 miles south of Portland, Ore. The facility accommodates all State of Oregon female adults in custody.

The Oregon Department of Corrections lists Monica under the female name, and he is described as being “female” in official documents, according to the Daily Mail.

Monica, who previously served in the Vietnam war and is a US Navy veteran, bought the 20-acre farm in Oregon where the gruesome murders took place in 1991.

Delicino was hired by Monica to work on the farm in 2012. There was allegedly a confrontation between the two after the handyman was said to have been found with Monica’s gun.

Monica claimed that during the altercation, the gun misfired and hit Delicino in the back of the head, killing him. Monica also claimed that he shot Delicino in self defense, with senior assistant deputy district attorney Allan Smith telling the jury in closing arguments that Monica’s changing stories never matched the forensic evidence.

Monica told investigators that Delicino was eaten by his pigs before being buried on the farm.

Just one year later, Monica hired Haney to work as a handyman on the farm. The man’s children became worried when they hadn’t heard from their father in over two months and filed a missing persons report with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.

Haney’s son, Jesse, visited Monica’s farm on January 1, 2014 to ask for his father’s items back and ask where he was.

“We hadn’t seen or heard from my dad for two months. We just all started to panic,” Jesse said in a documentary about the murders.

“His leather jacket was there. His dog was still running around and all his tools were there… It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” Jesse said.

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Highly-contagious infection spread by feces breaks out in Portland as homeless crisis sparks disease common in Third World

A highly contagious infection that is spread through tiny particles of fecal matter has broken out in Portland – with officials warning that the homeless population are most at risk of catching the illness.

Shigella is a bacteria that spreads through human feces. People transmit the infection after getting the microbes on their hands and then touching their mouths.

People can also spread the intestinal infection through sexual intercourse. 

Multnomah County in Oregon has warned that homeless people and same-sex male partners are most at risk because of their lack of access to hygienic facilities.

In the last month, 45 cases have been found in Portland, bringing the total from 2023 to 218. The influx of infections were reported among unhoused people in downtown Portland’s Old Town neighborhood.

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Oregon Secretary Of State Says Drug Decriminalization Measure Has Improved Treatment, Though Gaps Still Remain

Measure 110 has helped the growth of treatment and recovery services for drug addiction, but the state can do more to better manage the program, according to a report released Wednesday by the Oregon secretary of state’s office.

Lawmakers mandated the financial review, which looks at services that were established starting in 2022, two years after voters passed Measure 110, decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs and putting a share of cannabis revenue into treatment and recovery services.

Since 2022, the state has awarded $264 million in grants to 233 providers throughout Oregon that provide treatment, counseling and harm reduction, which can include distribution of clean needles. The review looked at where that money has gone and what providers are reporting to state officials. It did not consider how many people have been treated or received services or gauge the impact to society.

The findings come amid a call by Republicans for repeal of Measure 110, consideration by Democrats of needed changes to the law and a fentanyl-fueled rise in addiction and overdoses.

“Since it’s been implemented, the top question on everyone’s minds has been: Is Measure 110 working?” Audits Director Kip Memmott said in a statement. “It’s a complicated question to answer and much of the public conversation about Measure 110 is outside the scope of this review. We identified important progress being made, but it’s clear there is still much work to be done.”

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The first humanoid robot factory is about to open

A factory planning to pump out 10,000 two-legged robots a year is taking shape in Salem, Oregon — the better to help Amazon and other giant companies with dangerous hauling, lifting and moving.

Why it matters: Agility Robotics says that its RoboFab manufacturing facility will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, which could be nimbler and more versatile than their existing industrial counterparts.

  • China seems to think so: Beijing recently announced a goal of mass-producing humanoid robots by 2025.

Driving the news: Agility Robotics, which makes a bot named Digit that’s being tested by Amazon, plans to open RoboFab early next year, inaugurating what CEO Damion Shelton calls “the world’s first purpose-built humanoid robot factory.”

  • “We’ve placed a very high priority on just getting robots out there as fast as possible,” Shelton, who’s also a co-founder, tells Axios.
  • “Our big plan is that we want to get to general-purpose humanoids as soon as we can.”
  • There’s a growing backlog of orders for Digit, which the company says is the first commercially available human-shaped robot designed for warehouse work.

Where it stands: Agility has produced about 100 robots since its founding in 2016, and plans to move Digit production from its Tangent, Oregon headquarters to the more spacious 70,000-square-foot RoboFab facility in the coming months.

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Oregon Democratic candidate vows to ‘reclaim her sexuality’ after footage of her working as a $500-per-hour dominatrix at Manhattan BDSM dungeon was leaked, leaving her ‘hyperventilating and crying’

A Democratic Congressional Candidate is ‘reclaiming her sexuality’ after a clip of her working at a Manhattan BDSM dungeon was leaked.

Courtney Casgraux, 41, is a self-described ‘international businesswoman’ who is running for a seat in the United States House of Representatives for Oregon‘s first district.

The single mother of a teenage son was exposed in a video leaked on Reddit for working as a dominatrix in Manhattan during hers 20s and 30s. 

Casgraux would charge clients $500 for playing the dominant role in BDSM activities.

The California native returned to the BDSM industry when she began working at Donatella’s Dungeon – a hidden S&M club in Midtown Manhattan, The New York Post reported.

She launched her campaign to represent Portland‘s western suburbs on June 7 – a few months later she discovered provocative footage of her working as a BDSM dominatrix had been leaked to the public on Reddit.

The bombshell August 31 leak shocked Casgraux and left her in a state of panic: ‘I was like, “Who did this?” and I just started calling every single person that I pretty much knew from my past … I was like hyperventilating, crying,’ she said.

She described the upsetting moment she saw the video: ‘My heart just kind of sinked in and I went psycho.’

The political candidate never discovered who exposed her in the Reddit post – she thinks that whoever is responsible was attempting to ‘shame’ her.

‘To shame me for something that helped create the life that I have today where I have opportunity … made me really mad. Because it felt like an attack on women, not just an attack on me,’ she said.

She is now reclaiming her sexuality – starting with a Playboy campaign collaboration.

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Oregon Is Removing a Requirement for High School Students to Show ‘Essential Skills’ Before Graduating

Last week, the Oregon Department of Education unanimously voted to remove a requirement for Oregon high schoolers to demonstrate basic mastery in reading, writing, and mathematics in order to graduate. The requirement, which was most often met using students’ standardized test results, has been paused since 2020.

According to state documents, the “Assessment of Essential Skills” benchmark is typically met when a student meets a cutoff score in a statewide standardized test, though alternatives can be used for students who opt out of the test, such as samples of classroom work or scores from other tests like the SAT or ACT.

While score cutoffs have been unavailable since the pause in 2020, a state guide from the 2016-2017 school year lists the cutoff for one popular test, the Smarter Balanced test, which student take in their 11th grade year, as a score of 2515 for reading and 2543 for math. Based on score percentile data from 2017-2018, assessments would put those scores roughly in the 25th and 45th percentiles respectively (assuming no major changes in student performance over one year). 

While the math cutoff in particular might seem high, both ranges would barely put test takers just a few points into the “Level 2” range in Smarter Balanced’s 4-level scoring range. Level 2 scores are defined by the testing organization as meaning that a student has a “partial understanding of and ability to apply the knowledge and skills associated with college content readiness,” adding that a student in this level would need “support” to be ready for college.

While not every high school graduate can or should go to college, if a high school student can’t even demonstrate “partial” understanding of the subject matter of their classes, letting them continue on to their senior year and graduate high school without additional intervention is clearly irresponsible.

However, critics have framed the extra remediation many low-performing Oregon students receive as damaging. Department of Education officials opposed the policy in part because “higher rates of students of color, students learning English as a second language and students with disabilities ended up having to take intensive senior-year writing and math classes,” extra remediation that “denied those students the opportunity to take an elective,” according to The Oregonian. 

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Trans-identified male violently beats female student in Oregon middle school

A young female student was violently beaten by a trans-identified male in the hallway of an Oregon public school.

The shocking incident occurred at Hazelbrook Middle School in the Tigard Tualatin School District, which is right outside of Portland, Oregon.

The brutal beatdown captured on video shows the trans-identified student, a biological male, throwing multiple blows to the female student’s head after he violently grabbed her hair, yanked her back and forth, then knocked her down flat in the school hallway.

As the girl lay on the ground, he viscously grabbed her by the hair, dragging the girl across the ground before violently assaulting her further.

“I didn’t do anything! I didn’t do anything!” the victim can be heard pleading to the trans attacker, according to the video.

“Touch me again, b-tch,” the trans student threatened before walking away.

The female student stands up and walks over to the person filming the incident in tears and says, “I can’t breathe.”

The victim’s mother posted about her daughter’s “horrific” attack on social media, demanding answers from the school and threatening legal action against the trans attacker.

“Yesterday my daughter was attacked at school by a biological male student dressed as a girl. I cannot even put into words my anger at the situation after watching this horrific video nor my distraught knowing I can’t do anything because I will ultimately, end up in jail. To the school- Where were the supervisors? Why wasn’t anyone present in the hallways? I don’t want excuses, I want answers. Of course, the coward that he is fled after putting hands on her,” the mother said.

“HIS name is, [omitted] and as of right now the police cannot find him. We WILL be pressing charges. I want everyone to see this video. I want everyone to share this video. Assaulting someone is never ok BUT a boy/man should NEVER lay hands on a girl/woman and that’s on the parents for not raising a decent human being. Clearly, [omitted] isn’t a human of good values or morals,” she continued.

“In fact, he doesn’t seem like a good human being at all. He is known for being a bully and has done this to several girls. He is clearly, targeting females. [Omitted], if you see this just know we are coming for you and we will not stop until you are punished in the court of law to the furthest extent. You will NOT get away with this,” the mother said.

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