The Patriot Post® · Oregon's Death Sentence of No Boundaries

Taking away the stigma and the illegality of hard-core drug use wasn’t ever going to solve the problem, and yet the state of Oregon had to find this out the hard way.

In a futile attempt to be empathetic and help addicts get clean, Oregon passed Measure 110 in 2020. This ballot action decriminalized hard drug use (i.e., heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, etc.). It had the support of roughly 60% of Oregon voters. Under this legislation, offenders caught using hard drugs would, at worst, face a $100 fine, though they wouldn’t even have to pay the fine if they called the hotline number given to them by the police officer who issued the ticket.

According to a Wall Street Journal report in November, “Some 6,000 tickets have been issued for drug possession since decriminalization went into effect in 2021, but just 92 people have called and completed assessments needed to connect them to services, according to the nonprofit that operates the helpline.” That’s a success rate of 1.5% for addicts getting help to get clean — an absolute failure.

You can see the leftist logic behind Measure 110: Take away the stigma of doing drugs, and people won’t use and abuse them as much. Also, taking away any serious legal impediments (fines, incarceration, or involuntary enrollment in rehab) for using hard drugs will reduce the recidivism rate and also provide addicts with an opportunity to get clean via the hotline on their tickets.

But the logic is a total misunderstanding of human nature, and reality soon reared its ugly head.

Instead of a reduction, Oregon saw a spike in drug use of all kinds. And along with that increased drug use came a visceral and clear decay in communities. Addicts were strewn across sidewalks along with feces and needles. Homelessness and overdose-related deaths skyrocketed. In fact, one could say that legalizing hard drug use was a death sentence for addicts. Not only was the legal deterrent taken away, but drugs became both easier to access and increasingly harder and more deadly. This is a far cry from the humanitarian vision behind the ill-conceived Measure 110. By 2023, Oregon voters were clamoring to reverse the measure and reinstate law and order when it came to hard drug use.

Ironically, Governor Tina Kotek signed legislation reversing Measure 110 on April Fools’ Day. The leftists who aren’t having to deal with the day-to-day devastation that the defunct measure had wrought on the state are irate that Oregon is returning to law and order. The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union encouraged constituents to contact their state lawmakers while calling the reversal of Measure 110 a “return to the failed racist and classist tactics of the war on drugs that wasted billions of tax dollars criminalizing drug addiction, especially amongst Black, brown, and low-income people.” The ACLU chapter also asserted that reverting to the previous law-and-order strategy is more expensive.

This claim is particularly insidious when you look at the numbers. Remember, the success rate of the citation strategy was just 1.5%. Ergo, the leftists who share the ACLU’s opinion would rather see the destruction of communities and families continue. They would rather addicts continue to ruin their lives or even die via overdose because to do otherwise would be racist and expensive. This seems like a human-last perspective.

There isn’t a perfect solution to curbing drug abuse and addiction and all the subsequent consequences that go along with those life choices. Even in reversing Measure 110, legislators like State Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp conceded: “HB 4002 [which reversed Measure 110] is not a perfect solution; legislators will undoubtedly have much more work to do in upcoming sessions. But it sets a standard for how the state should approach the drug addiction crisis: by empowering law enforcement and our behavioral health systems to work together to help Oregonians struggling with chronic addiction seek life-saving treatment.”

Having boundaries via laws and law enforcement stands a better chance of reducing the problem than the anarchy of so-called freedom. Giving addicts the freedom to use and abuse drugs with impunity is giving them over to the enslavement of addiction.

Oregon voters have had an up-close and personal view of this contrast. The social experiment of legalizing hard drug use made the problem worse and killed more people. Residents have found they prefer law and order, as well as giving addicts a more firm hand in getting clean.