Oregon coming around to the realization that drug decriminalization was always a really bad idea
Oregon became the first state in the union to decriminalize possession of hard drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine in 2020. This radical experiment in lawlessness has been an unmitigated disaster.
While initially deaf to the concerns raised by Republicans, recovery specialists, and Christian groups concerning Ballot Measure 110, state Democrats are now poised to re-criminalize drug possession and bring their four-year experiment to an end. After all, the majority of Oregonians want the measure repealed.
How it started
The so-called "Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act" eliminated criminal penalties for possession of various quantities of hard drugs. As a result, junkies can now carry one gram of heroin; 2 grams of cocaine; 2 grams of meth; less than 40 user units of methadone; 1 gram or 5 pills of MDMA; less than 40 user units of LSD; and fewer than 40 pills of oxycodone.
Possession of such quantities amounts to a non-criminal Class E violation, which at most can result in a $100 fine or a recommendation for a health assessment with an addiction treatment professional.
Those caught with even more of these once-controlled substances have also seen penalties softened, such that they now face a misdemeanor charge with less than a year in jail, a fine, or both.
Extra to decriminalizing hard drugs, the measure mandated the establishment or funding of recovery centers throughout the state funded by taxes on marijuana.
According to Ballotpedia, the measure was championed by the Democratic Party of Oregon, the ACLU of Oregon, the ACLU, NAACP Portland, NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, and various other leftist groups.
"It takes a lot of courage to try something new, and I'm really proud of our sate," Haven Wheelock, a so-called harm reduction specialist who was among the petitioners to file the measure, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. "I'm excited to be a model for other places to show that we don't have to harm people for being sick."
Kevin Barton, the district attorney for Washington County, said, "I am hopeful with this new effort that it will be successful to address addiction, but I think everyone can agree its an experiment."
Measure 110 won with 58.5% of the vote. The decriminalization went into effect on Feb. 1, 2021.
How it's going
In Portland — a Democrat-run city that witnessed an exodus of businesses from its boarded-up and crime-ridden downtown — and across the state, junkies who might previously have been set straight by an arrest are now dying in the thousands.
According to Oregon Health Authority data, fatal overdoses have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2020, there were 824 fatal overdoses. The year M110 went into effect, there were 1,189 fatal overdoses. Preliminary data indicates the number of deaths from overdoses in 2022 was north of 1,100.
Fentanyl is proving especially lethal. OregonLive.com noted that in the year ending September 2019, there were 77 known fentanyl deaths. In the year ending September 2023, there were reportedly 1,268 overdose deaths.
There appears to be a correlation between fatal overdoses and M110.
A University of Toronto study published September in the Journal of Health Economics concluded that "when Oregon decriminalized small amounts of drugs in February 2021, it caused 182 additional unintentional drug overdose deaths to occur in Oregon in 2021."
This accounted for "a 23% increase over the number of unintentional drug overdose deaths predicted if Oregon had not decriminalized drugs."
The promised good associated with M110 has also failed to come to fruition.
Police suggested to OPB that the $100 tickets for possession of fentanyl and other such killer drugs go unpaid and the users never call the treatment hotline number.
"We've talked to exactly two people that have actually called that number," said Sgt. Jerry Cioeta of the Portland Police Bureau.
State auditors revealed that approximately 1% of junkies cited by police called the hotline, reported the Statesman Journal.
Some advocates for the failed policy claim it's too early to know whether it's working.
"We're building the plane as we fly it," Wheelock told the Atlantic. "We tried the War on Drugs for 50 years, and it didn't work[.] ... It hurts my heart every time someone says we need to repeal this before we even give it a chance."
Democratic half-measure
A nonpartisan statewide poll published last April found that 51% of Oregonians believed M110 had proven to be bad for the state. 65% of respondents said M110 made drug addiction worse. 63% said the measure made homelessness worse. 63% said it made crime worse.
With the understanding that the state has failed to adequately make good on its drug treatment programs or distributed cannabis tax revenue while overdoses and criminal activity skyrocketed, 53% of respondents suggested that M110 should be repealed.
An August 2023 Emerson College poll also found that 56% of Oregonians think that M110 should be repealed completely and 50% said it made their communities much less safe.
State lawmakers have introduced various proposals to tweak, replace, or repeal M110.
Democrats are pushing to make small-scale drug possession a Class C misdemeanor offense punishable by a month in jail and a $1,250 fine. Junkies would be afforded the opportunity to beat the charges by instead seeking treatment, reported Reuters.
"It became very, very obvious that what was happening on the streets of Portland, and what was happening on Main Street, Oregon, was unacceptable," said state Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber (D).
Republicans understand that the proposed legislation, House Bill 4002, signals an understanding on Democrats' part that M110 is ruinous, but say it is altogether toothless.
"We need serious penalties in order to make sure that people are getting into treatment, as opposed to staying on the street," said state Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp.
The Republican-supported Senate Bill 1555 and Senate Bill 1588 would make drug possession a Class A misdemeanor with penalties of a year in jail for drug possession and a $6,250 fine, reported the Statesman Journal. As with the Democratic alternative, junkies under the proposed Republican bills could receive probation instead of jail time if they pursued treatment.
"The Republican bill restores accountability, ushers addicts into treatment, and makes our streets clean and safe again – none of which will be achieved with the majority's proposal," said state House Minority Leader Rep. Jeff Helfrich (R).
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LA district to supply all schools with naloxone after 7 teens overdose on opioids
Following seven teen overdoses in the past month, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced on Thursday that all its schools will carry medication to reverse opioid overdoses.
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho called the county’s opioid epidemic an “urgent crisis,” the Associated Press reported.
Carvalho stated that all schools within the district from kindergarten through 12th grade would be provided with naloxone, also known under the brand name Narcan, within the next few weeks. The county public health department will provide the medication at no cost to the district.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second-largest district in the nation, with approximately 1,400 schools.
“Research shows that the availability of naloxone along with overdose education is effective at decreasing overdoses and death — and will save lives,” Carvalho said. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that not another student in our community is a victim to the growing opioid epidemic. Keeping students safe and healthy remains our highest priority.”
In addition to providing the schools with the medication, Carvalho announced that the district would launch an educational campaign about the dangers of fentanyl.
According to police, at least seven teenagers have overdosed in the past month from pills that were likely laced with fentanyl.
The most recent overdose occurred Saturday morning, when a 15-year-old boy was found unconscious by his mother at home. The boy is expected to recover.
Authorities are investigating whether the pills the boy took were the same ones that resulted in the fatal overdose of Melanie Ramos, who lost consciousness in the restroom at a Hollywood high school on September 13.
On Tuesday, L.A. Police Chief Michel Moore told the city Police Commission that the girl and her friend purchased a pill they believed was the prescription painkiller Percocet from a classmate. The two girls shared the pill in the high school bathroom and lost consciousness.
One teen woke up later that evening and attempted to wake Ramos, but she was unresponsive. Authorities reported that the pill, unknown to the girls, contained fentanyl.
Earlier that day and less than a half-mile away, paramedics responded to a call involving two teens involved in a possible overdose. The teens are believed to be students from the same high school.
Last week, police arrested two boys, ages 15 and 16, for selling drugs, including the ones responsible for Ramos’ death.
Los Angeles police are determined to find the supplier of the pills. Police Chief Moore described the two teenage boys as “simply pawns that are being used by adults and by drug trade organizations.”
Alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020 – killing more under-65 Americans than COVID
A new study revealed that alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020 from the previous year.
The study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that there was a 25.5% increase in alcohol-related deaths in 2020 from 2019. Between 1999 and 2019, the average annual increase in alcohol-related deaths was 3.6%.
The study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association discovered that more adults under the age of 65 died from alcohol-related factors (74,408) than from COVID-19 (74,075) in 2020. There were a total of 99,017 alcohol-related deaths, which accounted for 3% of all deaths in 2020.
"Research suggests that alcohol consumption and related harms increased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic," the authors of the study wrote. "Studies reported increases in drinking to cope with stress, transplants for alcohol-associated liver disease, and emergency department visits for alcohol withdrawal."
"The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed," study author Aaron White told the New York Times.
"Stress is the primary factor in relapse, and there is no question there was a big increase in self-reported stress, and big increases in anxiety and depression, and planet-wide uncertainty about what was coming next," White explained. "That’s a lot of pressure on people who are trying to maintain recovery."
The sale of alcohol was up to its highest level in 18 years, according to the International Wines and Spirits Record (IWSR). Alcohol consumption in the U.S. increased by 2% in 2020, the largest year-over-year increase since 2002, according to the IWSR's annual Drinks Market Analysis.
"In fact, the IWSR has predicted that by the end of the year, alcohol volume sales in the US will be up by 3.8% year on year, while value sales will be up by 5.5%," the Drinks Business reported.
Online alcohol sales more than quadrupled from $441 million in 2019 to an estimated $1.87 billion in 2022, according to analysts at RaboResearch.
As TheBlaze previously reported, the top killer of Americans aged 18-45 in 2020 and 2021 was fentanyl overdose. More Americans in that age range reportedly died from fentanyl overdoses than any other cause of death, including suicide, car accidents, cancer, and COVID-19.
Fentanyl fatalities have nearly doubled from 32,754 deaths in April 2019 to 64,178 deaths in April 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was analyzed by opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl.
The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics estimates that there were 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. between April 2020 and April 2021 – an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths during the same time period the year prior.
Authorities seize more than 2,000 lbs of fentanyl in New York
More than one ton of fentanyl was seized in the state of New York in 2021.
This, unsurprisingly, sets a new record for the amount of the synthetic opioid confiscated by law enforcement.
According to new data from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 2,420 pounds of fentanyl in total were seized in New York, with 95 percent of the haul — around 2,300 pounds — coming from New York City, the New York Post reported.
This total represents a 206 percent increase over the previous record set in 2020 — 790 pounds.
Tim Foley, the acting special agent for the New York Division of the DEA, said, “Throughout my 30 years in law enforcement, I have never seen anything with greater killing power.”
Overdose deaths in New York City have been steadily rising each quarter since 2018, and they peaked in the first quarter of 2021 with 596 recorded overdoses.
More than 100,000 Americans died from overdosing on drugs throughout 2021, which indicates a 29 percent overall increase in just one year.
Fentanyl is increasingly found in New York City in what is described as a “ready-to-ingest” pill form that is “designed to look like legitimate OxyContin, Vicodin or Adderall, among other prescription drugs.”
In 2021, the DEA of New York seized 82,087 fentanyl pills. This is a fourfold increase from the 19,378 fentanyl pills seized in 2020.
The DEA believes that the chemicals required to make the synthetic opioid are being sourced from China, but the pills are being made in Mexico and trafficked into the United States by criminal networks based out of Mexico.
The DEA said, “Criminal drug networks in Mexico are mass-producing deadly fentanyl and fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills, using chemicals sourced largely from China.”
The Commission Combatting Synthetic Opioid Trafficking released a multi-agency federal report last month that referred to the constant influx of fentanyl as “a slow-motion weapon of mass destruction.’
The Commission’s report demanded that steps be taken to stop the flow of “precursors chemicals” used to make the drugs from China into Mexico.
The report said, “The expansion of [China’s] chemical and pharmaceutical sectors has outpaced the government’s efforts to regulate them, creating opportunities for unscrupulous vendors to export chemicals needed in [fentanyl’s] illegal manufacture.”
The Commission’s report blames the ongoing fentanyl crisis on the widespread addiction to prescription painkillers, it connects this crisis to the Food and Drug Administration approving OxyContin in 1995.
OxyContin was “falsely marketed as an easy, nonaddictive fix for pain” and drug overdoses in America have “steadily climbed” since the decision to approve it for distribution.”
Rural populations decline in America for the first time in recorded history
For the first time in history, America’s rural population has declined.
A recently concluded study from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy found that the population of rural America dropped by nearly 300,000 between 2010 and 2020. This marks a 0.06% population decline and the first decline in America’s rural population in recorded history.
The study’s head researcher and author, Kenneth Johnson, told The Hill that “actual size of the loss isn’t particularly a big deal” but “the fact that it actually happened, that rural America, as a whole lost population, reflects a significant change.”
Johnson emphasized that it is important to try to analyze what this decrease means when assessing long-term demographic change.
Johnson asked, “Is it just a short-term thing, or is it a longer-term thing?”
Researchers are alarmed by this decrease, in part, because it indicates a reversal of immense growth in rural communities in recent decades.
From 2000 to 2010 there was a 1.5 million-person increase in rural population, and from 1990 to 2000 there was a 3.4 million increase.
The study posits that population increase is a consequence of the “balance” between births and deaths as well as migration patterns to and from rural areas.
Johnson’s study notes that the Great Recession of 2008 economically “froze” many American in place. Unemployment, housing debt, and a generally weak economy discouraged Americans from moving to rural parts of the country from urban areas.
It also found that rural populations, typically having older populations, experienced more deaths than births as fertility rates plummeted throughout the country.
Johnson wrote, “Natural increase [in population] declined because there were fewer births and more deaths. In 2020, fertility rates hit records lows and there were the fewest births since 1979. At the same time, deaths were at record highs because of population aging and growing deaths of despair (including from drug overdoses and suicide).”
In recent years, fentanyl overdoses have drastically increased as the synthetic opioid poured across America’s southern border. Fentanyl overdose has, in fact, become the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18-45.
Johnson suggests that rural population loss is likely to continue. He said, “If rural outmigration is ongoing, and deaths continue to exceed births in many rural areas due to low fertility and higher mortality among the aging rural population, then population losses are likely to continue in much of rural America.”
The study concludes by stating that “the demographic changes that are reshaping nonmetropolitan areas are important to contemporary policy making intended to increase the viability of rural communities and enhance their contribution to the nation’s material, environmental, and social well-being.”
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