Tag: oregon

Oregon Legislators Overwhelmingly Vote To Recriminalize Low-Level Drug Possession

Oregon legislators last week overwhelmingly approved recriminalization of low-level drug possession, reversing a landmark reform that voters endorsed when they passed Measure 110 in 2020. Gov. Tina Kotek has indicated that she is inclined to sign the bill, ratifying a regression driven by unrealistic expectations and unproven assertions.

“With this bill,” Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber (D–Portland) claims, “we are doubling down on our commitment to make sure Oregonians have access to the treatment and care that they need.” But Oregon is not merely making sure that people “have access” to treatment; it is foisting “help” on people who do not want it by threatening them with incarceration.

H.B. 4002 makes drug possession a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. A defendant can avoid that outcome by enrolling in a treatment program.

Under Measure 110, by contrast, drug possession became a Class E violation punishable by a $100 fine. Drug users could avoid the fine by completing a “health assessment” at an “addiction recovery center.” The initiative said the assessment should “prioritize the self-identified needs of the client” and refer him to appropriate services. But Measure 110 did not make agreement to those services mandatory.

The initiative’s supporters argued that coercive treatment is both less effective and more ethically problematic than voluntary treatment. “Research suggests that, except in certain circumstances where drug users are uniquely self‐​motivated (such as doctors and commercial airline pilots who fear losing their licenses), coercive treatment is futile at best and may increase the likelihood of overdose in people who relapse after release from treatment,” Jeffrey Singer notes in a Cato Institute blog post.

The policy embodied by H.B. 4002 is notably different from the legal approach to alcohol abusers, who generally cannot be forced into treatment unless they commit crimes such as driving while intoxicated. Measure 110’s supporters argued that abuse of those substances likewise should be treated as a health issue rather than a criminal matter.

Over 58 percent of voters agreed. But a continuing increase in opioid-related deaths, coupled with nuisances related to public drug use, soured Oregonians on Measure 110. By last August, at which point the initiative had been in effect for only a year and a half, an Emerson College poll found that 64 percent of Oregon voters favored reinstating criminal penalties for possession.

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Oregon House Passes Bill To Reverse Voter-Approved Drug Decriminalization Law

The Oregon House on Thursday passed a proposal to reshape the state’s response to the fentanyl addiction and overdose crisis and put more power in the hands of police and prosecutors to rein in drug users.

The bipartisan vote of 51-7 kicks House Bill 4002 to the Senate, the last step in a long legislative process that started last fall. The bill would unwind voter-passed Measure 110 by putting in place a new misdemeanor charge for drug possession, a move intended to encourage people to enter treatment programs rather than face charges and go to jail. Potential jail time for misdemeanor drug possession would only kick in if a defendant violates their probation.

The bill represents a bipartisan compromise between Democrats and Republicans that was hashed out over hours-long meetings dating to September, with dozens of witnesses from advocacy groups, law enforcement, family members of overdose victims and behavioral health providers giving testimony. Oregon’s district attorneys, police and sheriffs support it, as do cities and business groups like the Portland Metro Chamber of Commerce and Washington County Chamber of Commerce.

“We are in the midst of a profound public health crisis and we must meet it with compassion and courage,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Portland. “These are humans.”

The bill would undo a key provision of the voter-passed Measure 110, which decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs and enacted a system of $100 citations that a person could avoid if they obtained a health assessment. Police have said the citation system lacked the teeth necessary to encourage people to enter treatment, and a majority of Oregonians in surveys have voiced support for repealing Measure 110 or parts of it.

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Oregon school district under fire for making race ‘main criteria’ in discipline policy

An Oregon school district is being accused of discriminating against students based on their race through its new discipline policy.

Portland Public Schools (PPS) introduced its “Student Support, Discipline & Safety” policy in November. Under the policy, behavioral support plans must consider a student’s “trauma,” “race” and “gender identity/presentation,” as well as whether “social emotional learning” and “restorative justice” are appropriate for them.

The policy further requires each PPS school to maintain a “School Climate Team,” tasked with participating in “ongoing training in implicit bias, antiracism and culturally responsive practices.” Additionally, it mandates that a teacher not be transferred to another location if doing so would “decrease the building’s percentage of minority teachers to less than the student minority percentage in the building” or decrease its percentage of transgender and nonbinary staff to less than 30%.

The complaint filed Thursday by advocacy group Parents Defending Education (PDE) argues PPS is only disciplining select students based on “immutable characteristics” through its approaches, including race. The group is asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether the practices are in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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Did Decriminalization Boost Drug Deaths in Oregon?

Oregon is considering legislation that would recriminalize low-level drug possession, reversing a landmark reform that voters approved in 2020. Although critics of that ballot initiative, Measure 110, cite escalating drug-related deaths, decriminalization is not responsible for that trend.

Opioid overdose fatalities have been rising nationwide for more than two decades. That trend was accelerated by the emergence of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute, a development that hit Western states after it was apparent in other parts of the country.

“Overdose mortality rates started climbing in [the] Northeast, South, and Midwest in 2014 as the percent of deaths related to fentanyl increased,” RTI International epidemiologist Alex H. Kral and his colleagues noted at a conference in Salem, Oregon, last month. “Overdose mortality rates in Western states did not start rising until 2020, during COVID and a year after the introduction of fentanyl.”

That lag explains why Oregon has seen a sharper rise in opioid-related deaths than most of the country since 2020. But so have California, Nevada, and Washington, neighboring states where drug possession remains a crime.

Decriminalization under Measure 110 took effect in February 2021, and a 2023 Journal of Health Economics study estimated that it was associated with a 23 percent increase in “unintentional drug overdose deaths” that year. But “after adjusting for the rapid escalation of fentanyl,” Brown University public health researcher Brandon del Pozo reported at the Salem conference, “analysis found no association between [Measure 110] and fatal drug overdose rates.”

Kral and his collaborators concurred, saying “there is no evidence that increases in overdose mortality in Oregon are due to” decriminalization. That is consistent with the results of a 2023 JAMA Psychiatry study, which found “no evidence” that Measure 110 was “associated with changes in fatal drug overdose rates” during the first year.

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Idaho Lawmakers Want To Ban Marijuana Billboards Advertising Dispensaries In Neighboring Oregon

Idaho legislators introduced a bill on Wednesday to criminalize advertising illegal services or products—like marijuana—in Idaho.

Marijuana is illegal in Idaho and in federal law. But states surrounding Idaho, like Washington, Montana, Nevada and Oregon, have legalized marijuana for recreational use in recent years.

Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, told lawmakers on the House State Affairs Committee that there are advertisements for marijuana in Idaho, referencing a billboard in Idaho near the Idaho-Oregon border and newspaper advertisements shared by Rep. Heather Scott, who is from Blanchard in North Idaho near Washington.

“And then another individual sent me—actually on the internet—that you can have drugs delivered to your Idaho doorstep. So I thought this was a little outrageous,” Boyle told the committee.

Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, said she saw a billboard advertising marijuana in downtown Boise.

Co-sponsored by Boyle and Sen. Chris Trakel, R-Caldwell, the bill would create a new section in Idaho state criminal law to allow misdemeanor charges for “any person who willfully publishes any notice or advertisement, in any medium, of a product or service that is illegal under Idaho law.”

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Oregon University Will No Longer Give ‘D-‘ Or ‘F’ Grades

Citing a wrongheaded “GPA fixation,” Western Oregon University leaders have announced plans to abolish D- and F grades for students…

They will replace them with “no credit” in an effort to support student success and encourage struggling undergrads to continue their education despite obstacles, they said.

The public university announced in a news release this month the changes would start in the fall.

“Students not earning a passing grade will be required to repeat the course and demonstrate proficiency. Our goal is to ensure that students who have met the core competencies and learning objectives graduate and provide every student an opportunity to be successful at Western Oregon University,” Vice President of Academic Affairs Jose Coll said in an email to The College Fix.

Coll, who took the job as provost in June 2023, said in the news release that “GPAs will now be a true reflection of student success and course mastery; failures will no longer mask the demonstrated abilities of our students when they pass courses.”

The news release stated that “the institutional academic grading regulation will reflect a grade range of A through D; the letter grades of D- and F will be replaced with No Credit (NC) for undergraduate students.”

“The difference is that the grade of NC will not negatively impact student GPAs.”

The move comes as data from the school shows that 65 percent of freshmen who drop out of WOU have earned at least one “F,” Inside Higher Ed reported.

Western Oregon University acknowledged students receiving “no credit” are significantly more likely to continue with their education than those who fail classes, leading some to accuse the school of allowing “grade inflation” to occur, according to Inside Higher Ed.

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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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