Their proposed reforms would allow them to say they’ve done something about the problem without actually doing anything.
Their proposed reforms would allow them to say they’ve done something about the problem without actually doing anything.
H ard-drug decriminalization, a longtime project of George Soros and other progressives, has been a disaster in Oregon, the first state to try widespread decriminalization. In 2020, Soros’s decriminalization-advocacy outfit, the Drug Policy Alliance, spent $6 million to cajole Oregon voters into decriminalizing possession of small amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine, making Oregon the first state to do so.
The results have not been pretty. Overdose fatalities were increasing even before the enactment of Measure 110, the drug-decriminalization law, and have surged since. Between June and August 2023, ten Portland minors overdosed on hard drugs, mostly fentanyl. Five kids — a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a five-year-old, and two 15-year-olds — died.
Parts of Portland have become notorious for open use of fentanyl. Fentanyl dealers and users, for a time, occupied prominent vacant commercial buildings downtown. The sale of hard drugs remains illegal in Oregon, but when dealers are arrested, they are often quickly let free. In August, Multnomah County, which contains most of the city of Portland, announced the biggest fentanyl bust in the county’s history — seizing enough of the drug to make 11 million potentially fatal doses. Days later, the county was struggling to explain why it immediately released from jail one of the dealers arrested in the bust.
Measure 110 now symbolizes for Oregon voters a lenient approach to crime generally and to what remains of drug crime especially.
Polling over the summer showed that Oregonians of all political stripes, many of whom have long been comfortable with legal marijuana, desperately wanted to get rid of Measure 110. A group of former legislators and business leaders filed ballot initiatives to re-criminalize hard drugs. It became apparent even to the state’s dominant progressive Democrats that some kind of change was needed.
Oregon’s part-time, Democrat-controlled legislature failed to make significant changes to Measure 110 during its 2023 session, and the aforementioned polling showed that its failure could threaten Democrats’ decades-long grip on power in the state. This would not do, so legislative Democrats formed an interim committee to create the appearance, if not the reality, of fixing Measure 110 as more Oregonians perished between the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions. The committee’s Democrats, of which there are five versus three Republicans, have all received significant campaign contributions from Soros’ Drug Policy Alliance. All told, in 2022 Democrats on the committee pocketed $23,000 from the Drug Policy Alliance, which has mustered its resources to protect Measure 110.
Committee Democrats drafted their long-awaited Measure 110 reform bill behind closed doors, where input about the bill from the DPA and others would be off the record.
The Democrats’ bill, according to a PowerPoint presentation and a letter prepared by legislative attorneys to summarize the language the bill drafters have asked them to write, would reclassify possession of small amounts of hard drugs from a Class E violation to a Class C misdemeanor. Possession was treated as a Class A misdemeanor prior to Measure 110. The maximum sentence for a Class A misdemeanor is 364 days’ imprisonment and a $6,250 fine. For a Class C misdemeanor, the maximum sentence is 30 days and a $1,250 fine. For a Class E violation, there is no jail time and a maximum $100 fine.
Measure 110’s critics note that the threat of 30 days in jail is insufficient to incentivize addicts to go into treatment. Further, due to resource limitations, prosecutors are unlikely to prosecute Class C misdemeanors, and so police will be unlikely to make arrests. This is essentially the same dynamic that has resulted in the abject failure of Measure 110’s violation and citation system to connect addicts with treatment.
The Democrats’ bill would task the state’s Criminal Justice Commission with drafting rules for an entirely new “deflection” system, which would offer “screening and case worker intervention” to people charged with possession of a controlled substance. If such a program wasn’t offered to a defendant, the defendant would be able to use that fact as a defense against the charge. So, until the CJC went through a lengthy rulemaking process and an already-strained judicial system implemented the new “deflection” system, no one would be likely to go to jail for possession under the bill.
In sum, the proposed reform of Measure 110 is exactly what one would have predicted: It is recriminalization in name only, which will allow legislative Democrats to say they’ve done something about the problem without actually doing anything.
The Oregon legislature meets February 5 for its five-week session to consider the Democrats’ bill and, maybe, serious reform proposals as well.