Oregon Revives the Drug War

Lawmakers who didn’t want to overturn Measure 110 lobbied to tone down the language of HB 4002. Floyd Prozanski, a long-serving Democratic state senator, tried to insert a sunset clause to revert to decriminalization, without success. But advocates for Oregonians of color felt that they were excluded from the process. Measure 110 was heralded in large part because Black and brown people had been disproportionately criminalized by the drug war. A 2016 study found that Native Americans in Oregon were convicted of felony drug possession at five times the rate of white people. Black people, who make up 2 percent of the population in Oregon and have drug usage rates similar to those of white people nationally, were convicted of drug offenses at twice the rate of white people in Oregon. Now even liberal politicians seemed to forget these facts. “What was most galling about this is to have [the stakeholders involved] tell [lawmakers] that there were going to be disproportionate racial implications of this piece of policy and still have it move forward,” said Jennifer Parrish Taylor, the director of advocacy and public policy at the Urban League and a member of the Oregon Public Defense Commission. “You know internally that racism exists and anti-Blackness exists, but to see it in real time hits differently.”  

Oregon police opposed Measure 110 and lobbied hard for HB 4002. Dave Henslee, a former police chief in rural Klamath County who is now running for State Senate, argued that police had no reason to enforce Measure 110 or see it succeed. “The person wasn’t going to go to court, they weren’t going to go to treatment, but yet the police officer had a two-hour police report to write and drugs to put into evidence,” he reasoned. “So the fiscal impact to agencies, to cities and counties to process that charge wasn’t worth it. There’s no return on an investment.” Oregon has a shortage of jail beds and an even greater shortage of public defenders. Some see new opportunities in recriminalization. Nathan Sickler, a sheriff from Jackson county and staunch critic of Measure 110, has been on a years-long quest to build a large jail in his county, a project that has been revived by end of decriminalization.

Some treatment providers supported HB 4002 because, in their view, it reinstated “accountability” into the treatment landscape. Chris Wig, the executive director of a network of nonprofit treatment centers in Lane and Linn Counties, was able to use Measure 110 money in innovative ways, establishing an outpatient treatment program serving LGBTQIA2+ patients—precisely the kind of culturally specific program that Measure 110 was, in part, intended to set up, and which it will continue to fund. Nonetheless, he supported HB 4002; in his view, some people require “the touch of the justice system” to stop using drugs. He is a passionate advocate of drug courts, which have been the main referrers of clients to his centers.

Aaron, a lifelong Oregonian who lives in his van near my house in Portland and has supported a loved one through fentanyl addiction, has a more jaundiced view of the justice system: “If they’re going to jail, they’re not coming out the same. Every time you go in, it’s a little bit worse. It builds up a callus.”

Josette, another Portland resident, stopped using meth, crack cocaine, and alcohol four years ago and now works two jobs serving low-income and unhoused people. She is horrified by fentanyl and xylazine, drugs so powerful that any deterrent to treatment can be fatal. Until September, Portland had only two withdrawal management (detox) centers that accept Medicaid. A newly opened third has only 16 beds. Josette pointed out that they fall far short of what people need: “You detox, you release back out on the streets…Right across the street are people camped out flying on drugs and using drugs. Literally as soon as you walk out the door.” Meanwhile, there are treatment facilities that don’t allow clients to smoke cigarettes. Methadone clinics that require clients to show up every morning at 5am. It is not a system set up for people in pain. “Your ideas don’t mean shit if you’ve never suffered through addiction,” Josette said. “Someone who’s experienced the struggle and understands the obsession needs to be the one creating the plan.”

These kinds of gaps are a huge barrier to addressing substance use disorder, says Dr. Daniel Weiner, an addiction medicine doctor in rural Jackson County. Skeptical of Measure 110, he feels one of the most immediately useful pieces of federal legislation would be MOTAA, or the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act. This would allow physicians to prescribe methadone, currently dispensed primarily by for-profit clinics like the ones that haven’t always helped Josette’s clients. Dr. Richard Bruno, the Multnomah County Health Officer, stressed that recovery is a three-legged stool—counseling, social support, and medication—a complex mechanism that no single organization provides in full.

Yet contrary to what some opponents of Measure 110 believe, the landscape of recovery has changed. In 2022, the first year that money was able to reach programs, 60,000 people were served by Measure 110 funding, and to date there’s been a 300 percent increase in the delivery of some Measure 110–related services. In a state starting so far behind, that’s a big deal. Parrish Taylor hopes that HB 4002 will not have the horrible effects that she and her colleagues fear. “I want folks to know that if we do see successes, it’s not going to be because of recriminalization,” she said. “It’s going to be because the dividends are finally rolling in from the investments that were made from Measure 110.” Andy Ko sees HB4002 as “a reassertion of the classical war on drugs,” but “kinder and softer, in some ways…people aren’t willing to go back completely” to the harsh sentences and punitive approach. Senator Prozanski had a more pungent way of putting it: “We’re still in this puritan bullshit where we basically say, ‘we’re gonna punish the hell outta you and you’re gonna change.’”