Oregon Gov. Kotek to Sign 'Unconscionable' Bill Recriminalizing Drugs

The Drug Policy Alliance's leader expressed disappointment on Friday after Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek confirmed that she plans to sign legislation rolling back the state's historic measure that decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs.

"Today is not the end, just a detour. While I am saddened by today's developments, we at the Drug Policy Alliance will continue to advocate fiercely for an evidence-based, health approach to drugs in Oregon and across the United States," said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the advocacy group, which is part of the Oregonians for Safety and Recovery (OSR) coalition.

"The recriminalization of drugs in Oregon is happening in a difficult national environment where criminal justice reforms at large are under attack by special interests," she added. "As politicians learn that criminalization will not solve—and will worsen—the problems that Oregonians care about, opportunities to establish a true health-based drug policy should emerge. Despite this setback, the movement to replace drug criminalization with care continues. We won't back down until our communities are healthy."

Oregon voters passed Measure 110, also called the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, by a 17% margin in 2020, and it took effect the following February. The state was the first and only in the country to take the decriminalization and treatment approach, a shift widely lauded by drug policy groups. However, the measure "now stands as a cautionary tale about the failure to match bold policy reform with competent administration," Tim Dickinson wrote Thursday for Rolling Stone.

The Oregon Health Authority "provided inadequate support to the Oversight and Accountability Council, the body responsible for Measure 110 funding allocations," a Drug Policy Alliance memo explains. "This resulted in a significant delay in funding getting to service providers."

"The state failed to provide any training or standardized citation forms to law enforcement, many of whom were opposed to Measure 110," the memo continues. "The state deliberately chose not to advertise the screening hotline to the public. Rather than working to improve Measure 110 and provide real solutions, policymakers caved to a rollback effort bankrolled by business interests and led by the former chief of Oregon's prisons."

"Locking people up for possessing drugs or forcing them into court-ordered programs does not end drug use, but it does increase harms, including death."

In a wide-ranging statement about the end of this year's legislative session, Kotek announced Thursday that "reforms to Measure 110 will start to take shape, as I intend to sign House Bill 4002 and the related prevention and treatment investments within the next 30 days."

"As governor, my focus is on implementation. My office will work closely with each implementing authority to set expectations, specifically in response to the Criminal Justice Center's Racial Equity Impact Statement, which projected disproportionate impacts to communities of color and the accompanying concerns raised by advocates," she said. "House Bill 4002 will require persistent action and commitment from state and local government to uphold the intent that the legislature put forward: to balance treatment for individuals struggling with addiction and accountability."

As OPB detailed on Monday:

The system created by H.B. 4002 is complex; people found with drugs can be charged with a crime, but there will be multiple paths they might take to avoid conviction. Lawmakers have envisioned a "deflection" system that is meant to be a major step in that direction. Under the proposal, counties that choose to participate would create a way for police to route people caught with drugs to service providers, rather than to jail and the courts system.

So far, at least 23 counties—accounting for the vast majority of Oregon's population—have signaled interest. But what kind of policies they might create is unknown, hinging partly on state funding.

"H.B. 4002 is being touted as a compromise, but we ask at the cost to whom?" Jennifer Parrish Taylor, director of advocacy and public policy at the Urban League of Portland, an OSR member, said after Oregon legislators passed the bill with bipartisan support last week, with a 21-8 vote in the state Senate and 51-7 vote in the House.

"It is an unacceptable compromise when we know that there will be disparate impacts to Oregonians of color," she argued. "It is not enough to monitor the system when we know it is a system that has bias built into it. I fear that we will be back next year, hearing those stories of harm, figuring out how to make our communities whole."

Frederique warned in an opinion piece for The Daily Beast that "this recriminalization is dangerous. We've been down this road before. More than 50 years of evidence demonstrates that locking people up for possessing drugs or forcing them into court-ordered programs does not end drug use, but it does increase harms, including death."

Jessica Maravilla, policy director at the ACLU of Oregon, another OSR member, noted that as lawmakers debated the bill, "thousands of us took action and engaged in our democracy—calling and emailing lawmakers and submitting testimony for hearings."

"We asked for real solutions including more treatment, housing, prevention programs, community revitalization efforts, and nonpolice mobile crisis response teams," she said. "The ACLU of Oregon community has deep gratitude for the lawmakers who voted 'no' to the false promises of criminalization in H.B. 4002—and its unconscionable human and other costs to our state."

As Current Affairs' Nathan Robinson concluded while Oregon legislators considered their options last month, "This is not a story about the failure of decriminalization, it's a story about how U.S. politicians, even in a liberal state, seem incapable of addressing any social problem through means other than cruelty."