Politico: Oregon’s Decriminalization Of Drugs Law Failed Because They Didn’t Give It Enough Time

This is one of those stories from the Credentialed Media which makes you go “why? Why was it necessary to write this? To what point? This was weeks ago? What prompted you to bother giving this article a whirl? Don’t you have better subjects to write on?”

Why Portland failed where Portugal succeeded in decriminalizing drugs

America’s first experiment in treating hard drugs as a public health problem, rather than one for the police, looks like it’s about to end.

The Oregon Legislature has voted to repeal the state’s three-year-old law decriminalizing drug possession for personal use this month, joining cities from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., that are adopting new tough-on-drugs policies. Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek is expected to sign the bill, passed after a surge in fatal overdoses and public drug use, in the coming days.

But public health advocates behind the law say the repeal is coming before decriminalization had a chance to work. They point to Portugal, which saw a 75 percent drop in drug deaths since it adopted the same strategy in 2001 through 2022, as evidence that Oregon is giving up too quickly. Portugal’s success, they point out, wasn’t achieved overnight or even in three years.

Oregon’s experiment “was not given the time that it needed,” said Tera Hurst, the executive director of Oregon’s Health Justice Recovery Alliance. “This is a political response to a serious problem,” she said of the measure’s likely repeal. “This is life and death.”

Yeah, well, Portugal doesn’t have a fentanyl issue and massive homelessness like Oregon, particularly Portland and other Democrats run cities. They did have a big heroin issue, and worked hard to get those people into programs to help. It also didn’t have a problem with meth, though the use of meth is spreading across Europe. Portugal also did not go soft on crime simply because people were on drugs. Portugal didn’t simply say “hey, all drugs are legal, have at it”, they worked to make the drug use safe and then worked to get people off of them with treatment, which didn’t seem to be happening in Oregon.

It should be noted that Portugal was having a big problem with opioids in the 1990s, which led to their decriminalization law. They didn’t end up having a massive homeless problem after passing it nor a spike in crime.

Oregon’s lawmakers voted to once again impose criminal sentences for drug possession because of a surge in fatal overdoses and public drug use.

But Hurst and other decriminalization advocates said the law didn’t succeed because of problems with implementation: a failure to fund new treatment services for 18 months after the law passed, a failure to train police on their new role in addressing addiction, and a failure to direct drug users to treatment.

Well, who runs Oregon? That would be Democrats. And what works well in one place doesn’t necessarily work well somewhere else. Just because you and I buy the same guitar doesn’t mean we get the same results. Oh, and since Democrats were hamstringing cops and hating on them, why did they think the cops would go out of their way to handle drug users? But, hey, it’s easy for “advocates” to say to give it time and Credentialed Media writers to write in support when they are probably do not have to deal with the fallout themselves.

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