Oregon Reverses its Position on Drug Legalization As More Synthetic Drugs Pour Into the West Coast

As of September 1, 2024, Oregon’s grand experiment with drug legalization is over. After three years of decriminalization, Oregon voters decided that the experiment had failed and approved a law recriminalizing the possession or use of all illicit drugs except for marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.

On the way to this reversal of policy, there were many reports that the state failed to implement the safety nets that were intended to help those addicted to drugs. Mental health facilities that were supposed to house people during rehab were never opened. Citations handed out for drug use had no penalty effective enough to encourage drug users to seek help. Homelessness and overdoses climbed. Drug users were injecting fentanyl on downtown sidewalks. Enough was enough.

As of September 1, law enforcement personnel must either directly place drug users with addiction services providers or bring them before a judge that will put them on probation. Those facing the judge more than once will receive longer probation sentences and may serve jail sentences as long as 180 days.

A Steady Flow of Synthetics into the State

This change occurs just as synthetic drugs like nitazenes and xylazine were making their way from the East Coast to the West. As of 2023, these drugs were increasingly found in the Western United States. One way to measure the spread of a drug is to note how often it shows up in urine tests. Between January and June 2023, 3% of urine tests throughout the Pacific Northwest were positive for xylazine. Between November and April 2024, positive urine tests increased to 8%.

Oregon could have reduced the impact of synthetics on Oregonians by implementing this legislative change just as synthetic drug supplies increased on the West Coast.

A Closer Look at These Synthetic Drugs

By now, most people are familiar with fentanyl, a fully synthetic opioid painkiller. As noted above, in the last couple of years, the field of hazardous synthetics on the illicit market has been expanded to include nitazenes and xylazine. What are they?

• Fentanyl: This is not actually one drug but rather a family of synthetic opioids. A news story stating that someone died of a fentanyl overdose could really mean that they had consumed fentanyl, sufentanil, carfentanil, or another form of the drug. Plain fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Carfentanil is 10,000 times stronger than morphine.

• Nitazenes: This is a class of synthetic opioid-like drugs that can be as much as 40 times as strong as fentanyl.

• Xylazine: Nicknamed “tranq,” this synthetic drug often makes users comatose. It may be mixed with fentanyl or other drugs. Since 2020, xylazine has been associated with an increasing number of overdose deaths.

When you’ve got drugs like these pouring into an area, it’s dangerous to open the floodgates to all drugs.

Oregon’s Re-Criminalization Timeline

 

November 2020: Fifty-eight percent of voters approved Measure 110 and the decriminalization of personal use quantities of all illicit drugs, including fentanyl.

• July 2021: Measure 110 took effect. Police began handing out citations for drug possession or use. These citations ordered the drug user to pay a $100 fine. Alternately, they could call a help line and receive a screening for addiction. Their fine would be waived if they did so. The point of the screening was to refer as many people as possible to treatment.

• May 2023: A news story from Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that only 37 people had completed the substance use assessment and returned it to the court to get their fines waived.

• September 2023: The Portland City Council considered a proposal to ban the public use of drugs as a way of curbing some of the most disturbing elements of decriminalized drugs. A similar plan had already been on the agenda for a few months, but a 1971 law stalled its implementation. Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Rene Gonzales came up with a new approach to eliminate fentanyl-injecting drug users on Portland’s sidewalks.

• December 2023: Testimony before the Oregon Legislature by Max Williams of Fix and Improve Measure 110 noted that at that time, fewer than 1% of those people who received citations ever got any help.

• January 23, 2024: Lawmakers unveiled a new bill to undo decriminalization of personal quantities of drugs.

• January 31, 2024: Oregon officials declared a 90-day state of emergency regarding Portland’s fentanyl crisis. The goal was to quickly connect more people to addiction treatment.

• March 2024: The bill reversing decriminalization was passed. By this point, more than 7,600 citations had been handed out, but only about 200 people ever completed the screening to get their fines waived.

• September 2024: The recriminalization law took effect. Possessing small quantities of illicit drugs (other than marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms) is once again illegal.

Oregon’s Increasing Overdose Deaths

These graphs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tell much of the story.

The first graph shows the trend of all overdose deaths in Oregon. As 2020 ended, with the decriminalization law newly in effect, overdose deaths turned a small uptrend into a steeper one.

 

The second graph shows the trends in opioid deaths: all opioids (black), synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl (brown), and heroin (blue).

 

These graphs do not prove that Measure 110 caused this increase in overdose deaths. However, Measure 110 coincided with an influx of deadly fentanyl. The people who were most severely affected by this coincidence of events were those who could not control their use of drugs and inadvertently consumed a fatal dose of fentanyl.

When this second graph peaked in October 2023, 1,488 people had lost their lives in the prior twelve months due to any type of opioid overdose. The total number of fatal drug overdoses in the same twelve-month period was 1,885. Fentanyl accounted for 1,380 deaths.

Trying to Solve This Problem in Oregon

It’s not at all hard to understand why Oregon attempted decriminalization. Drug use and addiction are very complex problems that are difficult to address and solve. It’s even more difficult for cities and states to try to solve the problem by passing legislation.

Simply arresting people for being addicted to drugs is not a great solution, nor is giving any drug user free rein to use whatever they want, wherever they want, without penalties. Oregon tried it.

With this new recriminalization law, Oregon officials are still trying to find a middle ground between trying to arrest their way out of a problem and permitting free use. This excerpt from ABC News shows the two sides of this issue:

State Rep. Kevin Mannix, (R), has been one of the staunchest opponents of [Measure 110] and has contended that voters were misled. “We think that law enforcement has to have the authority to intervene for those who are using hard drugs,” he told ABC News.

Oregon State Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber (D) told ABC News that the law was not a mistake and it needs more time for the system to work. “We fundamentally haven't figured out how to have the behavioral health system and the criminal justice system really talk to each other,” she said.

It appears that Oregon officials and the public will have to continue to work together to develop solutions to this problem that not only takes lives but also contributes to the serious homeless problem in the state.

Helping an Addicted Person is Never Easy

When a person is immersed in addiction, when the cravings drive their every decision, it is impossible for many to say, “Yes, I would like to stop using drugs. I would like to go to rehab.” Whether they can ask for this help or not, no one wants to be addicted. An addicted person may feel that they don’t deserve any help. They may feel hopeless. It’s important to realize that if they make any statements like this, it’s the addiction doing the talking, not the individual.

Harm reduction does help prevent some overdose deaths and the transmission of disease, but the best help is effective rehabilitation. That means a program that returns a person to the condition they were in before they began to use drugs to the very greatest extent possible. That is real rehabilitation.

Sources:

• “Oregon’s drug decriminalization law rolled back as homelessness, overdoses on the rise.” ABC News, 2024. ABC News

• “‘Emerging Threat’ Xylazine Use Continues to Spread Across the United States.” Medscape, 2024. Medscape

• “Here comes an illicit drug 40 times more potent than fentanyl.” Oregon Live, 2024. Oregon Live

• “Xylazine.” Oregon Health Authority, undated. Oregon Health Authority

• “With Oregon facing rampant public drug use, lawmakers backpedal on pioneering decriminalization law.” PBS, 2024. PBS
  
• “‘It’s crazy out there’: The reasons behind Oregon’s deepening drug crisis.” OPB, 2023. OPB
  

• “Portland City Council takes another look at banning public drug consumption.” OBP, 2023. OBP

• “Max Williams Legislative Testimony.” Oregon Legislature, 2023. Oregon Legislature

• “Portland declares 90-day state of emergency to tackle fentanyl use.” BBC, 2024. BBC

• “Oregon law rolling back drug decriminalization takes effect, making possession a crime again.” PBS News, 2024. PBS News

• “Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024. CDC