It was hailed by progressives and drug reform advocates as a watershed moment: In November 2020, the voters of Oregon approved a ballot measure that made the state the first in the country to decriminalize the personal possession of all illicit drugs, including heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.
“Today, the first domino of our cruel and inhumane war on drugs has fallen,” Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national nonprofit that spearheaded the effort, declared the day the policy took effect. The new policy, she added, would set off “what we expect to be a cascade of other efforts centering health over criminalization.”
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But instead of setting off that wave of decriminalization, three years later – as Oregon confronts yet another spike in overdose deaths – the state is on the cusp of reversing its own lenient policy, after its legislature passed a bill early this month that once again criminalizes drug possession.
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The reversal comes as other high-profile liberal jurisdictions are also getting tougher on drugs and crime. Last week, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., passed a major public safety legislation package that increases punishments for various crimes and gives more leeway to judges and cops. And on Super Tuesday, San Francisco voters approved ballot measures that expand police powers and impose mandatory drug-screening and treatment requirements for welfare recipients.
“I would probably characterize it as a backlash,” Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University, says of the apparent trend, “against some pretty modest reforms that have been promulgated recently.”
The policy shifts come at a time when the national picture of crime is relatively complicated. While 2020 – a period of general upheaval amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic – went down as a dangerous year that saw a nearly 30% year-over-year homicide increase, 2023 appears to have been much safer.
Some big cities, however, have been facing serious local crises. Last year, Washington, D.C., saw a surge in carjackings as well as 274 confirmed homicides – the most the district had seen in decades and enough to rank it among the country’s deadliest cities. San Francisco had more than 800 motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 residents and – though a decline from 2022 – more than 20,000 car break-ins, according to The San Francisco Standard. The city also continues to grapple with an entrenched and highly visible homelessness crisis.
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Beyond the actual data, the climate of crime in each city has been punctuated by high-profile incidents: There was the April stabbing death of tech executive Bob Lee in downtown San Francisco, for example, and the October carjacking of Rep. Henry Cuellar in the nation’s capital. Notably, the suspect arrested in Lee's death was someone he knew.
Still, it's that perception of danger, experts say, that’s much more important in driving policy decisions, and which can lead to an impulse among the public and officials – both Republican and Democrat – to reach for coercive measures instead of addressing difficult and underlying structural issues.
Beletsky points to San Francisco, where voters just approved the controversial mandatory drug treatment ballot measure – a proposal pushed by Mayor London Breed, a Democrat – even as the city’s services remain inadequate and those there who do want drug treatment often can’t get it.
“It’s a quick fix,” Beletsky says. “We love quick fixes in this country.”
Oregon’s recriminalization legislation also comes after years of exasperation with a public health crisis that plays out daily on many of its most prominent streets. In 2019, the year before voters approved the decriminalization measure, Oregon saw 280 accidental opioid overdose deaths, according to state public health authorities. Afterward, such fatalities climbed, rising to 738 in 2021 and 956 in 2022. Last year, early data indicates the state was on track to reach more than 1,250 accidental opioid overdose deaths.
“Our country and our state have never seen a drug this deadly addictive, and we are all grappling with how to respond,” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, said in a statement in January, when the state’s leaders declared a 90-day state of emergency for downtown Portland over fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
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Less clear is whether the state’s first-in-the-nation decriminalization law deserves the blame. Oregon voters approved the law, called Measure 110, in late 2020, when the country – including advocates in Portland – was focused on criminal and racial justice reform in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
“There was an appetite to try something different, which included trying to decriminalize all drugs and instead focusing on drug treatment,” says Ben Hansen, an economist who researches drugs and crime at the University of Oregon, adding that it’s an approach broadly backed by evidence.
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But at the time the country’s fentanyl crisis, which had already devastated much of the nation, still hadn’t fully seized the West Coast. And then it did, and even with Measure 110 in place, the state’s crisis has escalated.
Three years in, some of the measure’s backers still support it, arguing it simply hasn’t had enough time to pay off, but many residents have had enough – even if evidence linking the permissive law to the state’s epidemic is limited and there’s no guarantee the recriminalization effort will produce better outcomes.
“If you were to ask the public at large I think there’s a perception that it hasn’t worked,” says Hansen. But he also notes that Oregon’s opioid crisis isn’t unique – fentanyl’s deadly scourge has been spiraling across the country: “How much did it get worse because of Measure 110? That’s what the statisticians and researchers are trying to sort out.”
Oregon politicians aren’t waiting for more answers. Late last week, Kotek announced she’ll sign the bill.
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