Oregon abandoned its drug law. Then came the mass arrests | Hacker News Reader

Oregon abandoned its drug law. Then came the mass arrests

theguardian.com

34 pointsc42038 comments

It doesn't seem like the law worked very well. Overdoses went up, and while this was largely due to covid & fent trends, it certainly was not an obvious success: https://imgur.com/a/45WAB6F

https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.cfsecosystem.com/m110/Presen...

https://www.rti.org/event/oregons-ballot-measure-110-symposi...

The article mentions a very important decriminalization-agnostic reason why no changes in outcomes were found within their analytic period: treatment took a really, really, really long time to set up, with funding only going out by the time decriminalization was rolled back. There was lack of capacity both in terms of staffing the actual programs, but as well in reviewing the programs.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/14/oregon-drug-decrimina...

Second, M110 funding comes from marijuana taxes, and a significant downturn in funding is anticipated this FY – I don't know the specific numbers, but it's on the magnitude of 25%. This is the context of the article's observations that treatment _still_ is impossible to find.

As a result, I'd argue that Oregon's not going to see many changes in health-related outcomes.

It also didn't worsen things... There is no clear relationship between the passing of the law and any trend.

Exactly.

Treatment doesn't help--it's not something that can be imposed. You force someone into drug treatment, you're either wasting your money or their money. Every immediate family member I have ever had has at least touched on handling addiction--and they have all been adamant that it's useless without the desire. "You want to want to quit smoking, but you don't actually want to quit smoking. I won't take your money when I know I can't help you. Come back when you truly want to quit smoking."

But locking them up doesn't help, either, other than in locking them up when their drug use causes other problems. Same as drinking is legal but drunk and disorderly is not.

Homelessness went up, but counting them is hard, and untangling it from pure econ causes is also hard.

This group claims PITC went up year over year. Surged, they said. https://www.dogoodmultnomah.org/homelessness-portland

It would be hard to claim for Multnomah county residents to say things got better regarding the homeless situation after 2020, but the tide could have been coming in for multiple reasons.

The direction of causation there is strange, too. COVID-19 era eviction moratoria expired halfway through June, and records have consistently been beat since then. (There are also anecdotal rumors that people get bussed in from across the country. I think PIT count data collects that, but I need to double-check.)

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/29/oregon-housing-renter...

The slides you link state that the law had no meaningful impact on overdoses and that it’s probably too early to draw any meaningful conclusions. Given the time it takes to ramp up things like mandatory rehab, it’s not clear it could have that big of a short term impact.

And https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37556870/

I lost my job during Covid. I didn’t start using meth or fentanyl

You seem to be implying we can draw a conclusion from this data point?

> “Until the person truly wants to quit, they’re not going to. Forcing people into treatment, it’s against our will and unjust.”

I agree, but the policy should be, confiscation and destruction of drugs and no charges. Allowing dealers to take advantage of and profit off of a vulnerable is against the public will and is unjust.

To me that's an argument for the gov't providing controlled doses that must be taken at the location.

This undercuts the illegal drug economy, reduce theft and other related crime, as well as reducing risk of ODs as they'll get proper doses of good quality.

That said, I'm not sure if ease of access will exacerbate the problem. Which would be an argument against.

I doubt you truly need the taken-at-location part other than for political acceptability. Sure, it's safer, but taken at location imposes a considerable burden upon the users.

As for ease of access--the experimental data is limited but doesn't appear to show any big effects.

The drug war imposes huge costs, though. My personal thoughts on this:

1) The date-rape drugs probably should be illegal or highly restricted.

2) The addictive drugs should be legal for adults. Experimental data will be needed to figure out if we need to make them prescription only--if a prescription requirement is imposed addiction should be considered a valid reason for a script and it should not involve the hoops that a controlled script currently entails.

3) The stuff that has little addiction potential should be legal for adults, period.

4) No advertising beyond simple price lists is permitted anywhere other than where you know the person has already indicated an interest in the substance. (Thus I would permit a cigarette company to freely tout their products behind a click-through--lots of adult websites do the sort of thing I'm thinking of.) Products are siloed--if you're looking at X you have not expressed an interest in Y. One business can sell multiple drugs but must silo them from each other. Ads can never chase you--once you have left the website consent no longer exists.

5) #4 also applies to tobacco and alcohol. The gas station can sell smokes but all the tobacco-related ads have to go. Many grocery stores already silo the alcohol and I haven't seen tobacco not siloed in a long, long time. (Smoke shops with the cartons laid out are siloed--it's just at the front door.)

Canada has/had? a similar pilot program, but for alcohol use where you get a drink every hour: it might be a good comparison re: health outcomes alone. Let me find a link.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/26/homeless-she...

This describes the methadone clinic model I remember from back in the 70s in NYC

Why would the illegal drug economy ever let politicians that would implement this get into positions of power to do so?

Yeah, we've seen that with alcohol. The bootleggers want dry counties, it's good for business. Bad for everyone else, though. (Yeah, even when quality isn't an issue. You see more DUI in dry counties.)

I think the legal drug economy has a hand in it as well.

Wouldn't they presumably be the ones selling crack, meth, heroin , etc to the government?

This creates a powerful incentive for the government to become a drug dealer and create more addicts to avail itself of more taxpayer money. See the homeless-industrial complex in SF, Seattle, and elsewhere. Billions disappearing into a black hole as the problem gets worse and worse.

Time to take your soma!

Why aren’t they making the laws harsher on dealers?

No dealers no drugs

The laws are plenty harsh for dealers.

There's always new cannon fodder available to serve as first-line ablative customer service for the big suppliers.

Drug dealing basically works like a MLM the edges of the tree are easy to find and arrest but they are mostly easily replaceable young kids that putting them away does little to the overall flow.

The decriminalization law Oregon passed was harsher on dealers. Only small amounts in your possession were decriminalized.

A hard problem with nothing but bad options.

Feels like our choices are either to reduce incarceration, which is cheaper and less harsh on drug users, but does nothing to reduce drug use in a given community, or to continue to arrest drug users, which removes them from the community, but is expensive and morally questionable.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The real solution probably takes decades to see results and requires changes in multiple different places to generally reduce the likelihood that a society produces drug users in the first place, which given the current cultural and political environment feels impossible.

This seems like a very expensive way to govern. Prison is not cheap.

Someone attached to Oregon here – it isn't, and it's even harder to retain people at current pay grades in state corrections medical. (Let alone public defense, which the article mentions means that people are being let go in many counties before non-drug-related charges are tried.)

https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/02/03/amid-mounting-...

You inspired me to go looking for cost analysis. It's worse than I thought. Oregon is about 79k per year, per person, based on 2024 numbers in this pretty infogrpahic. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-sta...

This is the US in a nutshell. And then they wonder why the deficit is so high? Most expensive healthcare. Most expensive incarceration. Most expensive childcare. Most expensive infrastructure projects. Endless list.

The "deficit" is high because USD is the world reserve currency, and the government policy is to prevent natural deflation. The "deficit" should really be called the surplus as it represents the centralized gains of progress from everybody who is still willing to invest in America despite that collection.

The popular political movement aimed at reducing the "deficit" is really just part of the larger global movement to destroy the US's world leadership position, hence the related goal of ruining our relationships with our allies and whatnot.

Having said that, I agree that the dynamic here is a horrible waste of resources. Housing someone in an SRO (single room occupancy) without guards would cost like one quarter of what jail/prison costs.

Many of the addicts are long past the mission of "trying to feel good" but are trying to stave off horrible withdrawal symptoms. Ibogaine clinics can help a lot of people. Ibogaine clinics don't work for everybody, and won't work for those who don't want to change their lifestyle, but can help bring back something resembling an okay life for a lot of people.

They realized that they don't stand a chance against the cartels, so they're trying to scare the populace instead.

What? Scare the criminals breaking the law using drugs?

Kinda what Cops are supposed to do? Should they say “please stop breaking the law” ?

The cops will enforce the laws. I'm talking about the lawmakers - decriminalization failed repealed because Oregon failed at stopping cartels. Whats the point of decriminalizing if it won't achieve the goal of reducing drug use?

In order to stop drugs, you have to either kill supply, demand, or both.

> if it won't achieve the goal of reducing drug use?

If they tried decriminalization with the specific goal of reducing drug use then uhh yeah that was doomed from the start. You decriminalize certain drugs because you want to reduce possession/use arrests and view the treatment as worse than the disease. Arrests for use/possession serve one important function for people which is getting users out of public view even if it doesn't reduce drug use or work at all to get people off them. And Oregon found out how many people value clean streets at the expense of drug users. Can't really blame them.

I don't think the goal was to reduce drug use, it was to create a legal marijuana industry and reduce policing which was a broadly popular sentiment in 2020.

https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminali...

I don't have a copy of the original voters pamphlet with all the pro and against arguments, but I don't recall this ever being advertised as reducing drug use.

I think it did succeed in its goals of legitimizing marijuana in the state, and it did succeed in reducing police involvement in drug enforcement. Whether consequences emerged from these goals is another topic.

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