Oregon abandoned its drug law. Then came the mass arrests

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/31/oregon-new-drug-law-arrests

by c420 • 1 year ago

34 38 1 year ago

theguardian.com

givemeethekeys2• 1 year ago

They realized that they don't stand a chance against the cartels, so they're trying to scare the populace instead.

zombiwoof3• 1 year ago

What? Scare the criminals breaking the law using drugs?

Kinda what Cops are supposed to do? Should they say “please stop breaking the law” ?

givemeethekeys2• 1 year ago

The cops will enforce the laws. I'm talking about the lawmakers - decriminalization failed repealed because Oregon failed at stopping cartels. Whats the point of decriminalizing if it won't achieve the goal of reducing drug use?

In order to stop drugs, you have to either kill supply, demand, or both.

verteu3• 1 year ago

It doesn't seem like the law worked very well. Overdoses went up, and while this was largely due to covid & fent trends, it certainly was not an obvious success: https://imgur.com/a/45WAB6F

https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.cfsecosystem.com/m110/Presen...

https://www.rti.org/event/oregons-ballot-measure-110-symposi...

zombiwoof3• 1 year ago

I lost my job during Covid. I didn’t start using meth or fentanyl

andybak• 1 year ago

You seem to be implying we can draw a conclusion from this data point?

verteu3• 1 year ago

And https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37556870/

nxobject4• 1 year ago

The article mentions a very important decriminalization-agnostic reason why no changes in outcomes were found within their analytic period: treatment took a really, really, really long time to set up, with funding only going out by the time decriminalization was rolled back. There was lack of capacity both in terms of staffing the actual programs, but as well in reviewing the programs.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/14/oregon-drug-decrimina...

Second, M110 funding comes from marijuana taxes, and a significant downturn in funding is anticipated this FY – I don't know the specific numbers, but it's on the magnitude of 25%. This is the context of the article's observations that treatment _still_ is impossible to find.

As a result, I'd argue that Oregon's not going to see many changes in health-related outcomes.

aredox• 1 year ago

It also didn't worsen things... There is no clear relationship between the passing of the law and any trend.

9x392• 1 year ago

Homelessness went up, but counting them is hard, and untangling it from pure econ causes is also hard.

This group claims PITC went up year over year. Surged, they said. https://www.dogoodmultnomah.org/homelessness-portland

It would be hard to claim for Multnomah county residents to say things got better regarding the homeless situation after 2020, but the tide could have been coming in for multiple reasons.

LorenPechtel3• 1 year ago

Exactly.

Treatment doesn't help--it's not something that can be imposed. You force someone into drug treatment, you're either wasting your money or their money. Every immediate family member I have ever had has at least touched on handling addiction--and they have all been adamant that it's useless without the desire. "You want to want to quit smoking, but you don't actually want to quit smoking. I won't take your money when I know I can't help you. Come back when you truly want to quit smoking."

But locking them up doesn't help, either, other than in locking them up when their drug use causes other problems. Same as drinking is legal but drunk and disorderly is not.

anon70002• 1 year ago

The slides you link state that the law had no meaningful impact on overdoses and that it’s probably too early to draw any meaningful conclusions. Given the time it takes to ramp up things like mandatory rehab, it’s not clear it could have that big of a short term impact.

timewizard2• 1 year ago

“Until the person truly wants to quit, they’re not going to. Forcing people into treatment, it’s against our will and unjust.”

I agree, but the policy should be, confiscation and destruction of drugs and no charges. Allowing dealers to take advantage of and profit off of a vulnerable is against the public will and is unjust.

zombiwoof3• 1 year ago

Why aren’t they making the laws harsher on dealers?

No dealers no drugs

ceejayoz• 1 year ago

The laws are plenty harsh for dealers.

There's always new cannon fodder available to serve as first-line ablative customer service for the big suppliers.

tick_tock_tick• 1 year ago

Drug dealing basically works like a MLM the edges of the tree are easy to find and arrest but they are mostly easily replaceable young kids that putting them away does little to the overall flow.

anon70002• 1 year ago

The decriminalization law Oregon passed was harsher on dealers. Only small amounts in your possession were decriminalized.

magicalhippo• 1 year ago

To me that's an argument for the gov't providing controlled doses that must be taken at the location.

This undercuts the illegal drug economy, reduce theft and other related crime, as well as reducing risk of ODs as they'll get proper doses of good quality.

That said, I'm not sure if ease of access will exacerbate the problem. Which would be an argument against.

nxobject4• 1 year ago

Canada has/had? a similar pilot program, but for alcohol use where you get a drink every hour: it might be a good comparison re: health outcomes alone. Let me find a link.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/26/homeless-she...

sightbroke2• 1 year ago

Why would the illegal drug economy ever let politicians that would implement this get into positions of power to do so?

howard941• 1 year ago

This describes the methadone clinic model I remember from back in the 70s in NYC

LorenPechtel3• 1 year ago

I doubt you truly need the taken-at-location part other than for political acceptability. Sure, it's safer, but taken at location imposes a considerable burden upon the users.

As for ease of access--the experimental data is limited but doesn't appear to show any big effects.

The drug war imposes huge costs, though. My personal thoughts on this:

1) The date-rape drugs probably should be illegal or highly restricted.

2) The addictive drugs should be legal for adults. Experimental data will be needed to figure out if we need to make them prescription only--if a prescription requirement is imposed addiction should be considered a valid reason for a script and it should not involve the hoops that a controlled script currently entails.

3) The stuff that has little addiction potential should be legal for adults, period.

4) No advertising beyond simple price lists is permitted anywhere other than where you know the person has already indicated an interest in the substance. (Thus I would permit a cigarette company to freely tout their products behind a click-through--lots of adult websites do the sort of thing I'm thinking of.) Products are siloed--if you're looking at X you have not expressed an interest in Y. One business can sell multiple drugs but must silo them from each other. Ads can never chase you--once you have left the website consent no longer exists.

5) #4 also applies to tobacco and alcohol. The gas station can sell smokes but all the tobacco-related ads have to go. Many grocery stores already silo the alcohol and I haven't seen tobacco not siloed in a long, long time. (Smoke shops with the cartons laid out are siloed--it's just at the front door.)

ein0p• 1 year ago

This creates a powerful incentive for the government to become a drug dealer and create more addicts to avail itself of more taxpayer money. See the homeless-industrial complex in SF, Seattle, and elsewhere. Billions disappearing into a black hole as the problem gets worse and worse.

TrnsltLife• 1 year ago

Time to take your soma!

acidmath• 1 year ago

Many of the addicts are long past the mission of "trying to feel good" but are trying to stave off horrible withdrawal symptoms. Ibogaine clinics can help a lot of people. Ibogaine clinics don't work for everybody, and won't work for those who don't want to change their lifestyle, but can help bring back something resembling an okay life for a lot of people.

josefritzishere2• 1 year ago

This seems like a very expensive way to govern. Prison is not cheap.

nxobject4• 1 year ago

Someone attached to Oregon here – it isn't, and it's even harder to retain people at current pay grades in state corrections medical. (Let alone public defense, which the article mentions means that people are being let go in many counties before non-drug-related charges are tried.)

https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/02/03/amid-mounting-...

josefritzishere2• 1 year ago

You inspired me to go looking for cost analysis. It's worse than I thought. Oregon is about 79k per year, per person, based on 2024 numbers in this pretty infogrpahic. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-sta...

nathancahill• 1 year ago

This is the US in a nutshell. And then they wonder why the deficit is so high? Most expensive healthcare. Most expensive incarceration. Most expensive childcare. Most expensive infrastructure projects. Endless list.

mindslight• 1 year ago

The "deficit" is high because USD is the world reserve currency, and the government policy is to prevent natural deflation. The "deficit" should really be called the surplus as it represents the centralized gains of progress from everybody who is still willing to invest in America despite that collection.

The popular political movement aimed at reducing the "deficit" is really just part of the larger global movement to destroy the US's world leadership position, hence the related goal of ruining our relationships with our allies and whatnot.

Having said that, I agree that the dynamic here is a horrible waste of resources. Housing someone in an SRO (single room occupancy) without guards would cost like one quarter of what jail/prison costs.

spicyusername• 1 year ago

A hard problem with nothing but bad options.

Feels like our choices are either to reduce incarceration, which is cheaper and less harsh on drug users, but does nothing to reduce drug use in a given community, or to continue to arrest drug users, which removes them from the community, but is expensive and morally questionable.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The real solution probably takes decades to see results and requires changes in multiple different places to generally reduce the likelihood that a society produces drug users in the first place, which given the current cultural and political environment feels impossible.

Oregon abandoned its drug law. Then came the mass arrests

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