The full implementation of Measure 110 is just getting underway, but opponents of drug decriminalization are already seeking to gut it
By Herbert Rothschild
Last week I focused on California’s new approach to handling the challenge posed by unhoused people with serious mental disorders. The state’s 2022 Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act and the CARE Court system it established is an experiment that may or may not prove humane and effective. Along with sharing information about it I made two points. One was that the challenge it addresses is a very difficult one and no one can be certain in advance what solutions will work. The other was that we need to wait for the results and inform our own public policy accordingly.
Even as I wrote that column, I saw an analogy between what California’s legislators chose to attempt and what we in Oregon attempted by passing ballot Measure 110 in November 2021, which decriminalized possession of small quantities of all recreational drugs. We had no assurance about the outcomes, although Portugal has had reasonably good success with decriminalization. All we knew for sure after decades of experience was that treating drug use and addiction as a criminal justice problem has been a disaster.
We still don’t know what the consequences of decriminalization will be, because the two years that have passed since the enabling legislation went into effect is not a long time. Further, as I shared when I revisited the policy in a column last November, the Oregon Health Authority was slow to get the dedicated funds from the state marijuana tax out to treatment providers. Steve Allen, OHA’s behavioral health director, said, “When you do something for the first time you’re going to make mistakes.” Since a large expansion of such care was a crucial component of Measure 110, only when the enhanced system has been fully up and running for (I would say) at least two years will any judgment on our experiment have a trustworthy evidentiary basis.
That has not deterred a group of highly placed Oregonians from deciding that decriminalization has failed. Last Saturday, the Rogue Valley Times reprinted an article that first appeared in The Oregonian/Oregon Live on Aug. 29 about the group’s intention to convince legislators to change the law or, if that fails, to put a new measure on the ballot next fall. According to the story, Jordan Schnitzer, a wealthy Portland real estate developer who is likely to bankroll their ballot initiative, said that Measure 110 is a complete failure.
Also, the story quoted Max Williams, former executive director of the Oregon Department of Corrections and a key figure in this drive, as saying that his group doesn’t want to repeal the current law but to improve it. “This isn’t about going backwards to the old system. Everybody agrees that system wasn’t great.” But while there may be a difference between what Williams et al. have in mind and the status quo ante Measure 110, namely, to force users into treatment programs rather than incarcerate them — there’s no obscuring the fact that they want to re-institute criminalization.
Why their rush to judgment? Just when I got wind of what Williams’s group is up to, I also learned via an email from Tera Hurst, executive director of the Health Justice Recovery Alliance, of the opening of Portland’s first detox center funded by the dedicated revenue. She predicted that it will serve at least 1,200 low-income Oregonians per year. She said that 2023 “is the year that M110 is getting on firm footing!”
The modest fine that now is the penalty for simple possession isn’t forcing people into treatment. That doesn’t mean that the expanded facilities Measure 110 has made possible are underused. Again from Hurst: “In Portland there is already a line out the door every morning at local detox centers. We don’t have a demand problem, we have a supply problem. But because of Measure 110, people seeking substance use treatment funded by Measure 110 increased 44%. Arrests don’t get people into treatment — they never have. What gets people into treatment is outreach and having services like this new detox center available.”
On the Health Justice Recovery Alliance website, there’s an interactive map that shows the locations of treatment providers funded by Measure 110. The numbers are impressive. Just in our area, there is one addiction recovery center in Ashland, five in Medford and one in Central Point. I would urge the Rogue Valley Times and Ashland.news to send reporters to those facilities to determine how well their services are being accessed. That’s the kind of data which should determine whether we need to repudiate the basic premise of the system Measure 110 created. After all, if the demand for extant services is high, it’s not clear how we would handle a flood of new and unwilling clients that a return to coercion would produce. I said the same about what California is attempting.
Juxtaposing California’s CARE Court with Oregon’s decriminalization, it’s interesting that the former is experimenting with introducing coercion into society’s handling a damaged set of people and the latter is experimenting with removing coercion from society’s handling a damaged, though different, set of people (although let it be noted that large numbers of recreational drug users are functioning members of society).
It may seem ideologically inconsistent to say that both experiments should be given a chance to work. Libertarians favor rejecting coercion in the handling of both the mentally ill and the chemically dependent. Conversely, those who believe that society should intervene in individuals’ lives presumably for their own good have no problem with coercion in both cases. But I’m willing to sacrifice such consistency for the best outcomes possible, meaning health and hope restored. Let’s give both experiments time to prove their worth.
Herbert Rothschild is an unpaid Ashland.news board member. Opinions expressed in columns represent the author’s views and may or may not reflect those of Ashland.news. Email Rothschild at herbertrothschild6839@gmail.com.
