Seemingly, the major failure there was having the one part (decriminalization) without the other - crucial - part (treatment and support).
The support and treatment structures have remained essentially unchanged since Measure 110 passed, with holdups to funding and logistics at almost every level of the state's government. Oregon was already ranked almost dead last in addiction treatment, and that hasn't budged. I can't see how it would work without this other critical piece.
Also worth noting is that research has found no association with with Measure 110 and crime, and crime has been steadily falling since the measure was passed. (along with most other metro areas in the USA) https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/24/portland-crime-violen...
It wasn't Portland. Voters in Oregon as a whole passed Measure 110 in 2020 that replaced criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of drugs with $100 fines.
Then in April of 2024 House Bill 4002 made possession once again a misdemeanor but kept most of the other provisions of Measure 110 and still focuses on "deflecting" people who possess out of the criminal justice system and into treatment programs.
So Measure 110 is still mostly in effect. They just made it so you do in fact have something on your record if you're caught with possession.
> It wasn't Portland. Voters in Oregon as a whole passed Measure 110 in 2020 that replaced criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of drugs with $100 fines.
Unless you're forced to do something to deal with the addiction then there's probably not much point for this kind of thing:
> Starting September 1, 2024, possession of hard drugs became classified as a criminal misdemeanor outside of the regular A-E categorization system, carrying a sentence of up to 6 months of jail, which may be waived if the convictee enters into mandatory drug treatment.[8][9]
Of course one needs to keep at it, otherwise things fall apart:
> Funding ebbed still more recently due to new national budget pressures, which undercut efforts encouraging addicts into rehabilitation programs. The results of “disinvestment” and “a freezing in [their] response” led Goulão to state that “what we have today no longer serves as an example to anyone.”
> Speaking more quantitatively, drug users in treatment declined from 1,150 to 352 (from 2015 to 2021) as funding dropped in 2012 from $82.7 million to $17.4 million. Budget pressures and the apparent desire to cut immediate program costs of drug addiction (distinct from the total societal cost of drug addiction) led to program decentralization and the use of NGOs. Anecdotal evidence of a fragmenting, even breaking, system abounds: Demoralized police no longer cite addicts to get them into treatment and at least some NGOs view the effort as less about treatment and more about framing lifetime drug use as a right.
> The other question is does the US have the resources (that people can afford) to have folks go to treatment.
In terms of GDP per capita, the USA is the 6th richest on the planet. So the question is not do we have the resources (we do!), but are we willing to make the political and social choices that would be required to deploy the resources to such ends.
Decriminalization is step the first step. The obvious result is going to be that a problem _sometimes_ hidden becomes more prevalent. What failed in the Portland experiment was a lack of stable housing coupled with a public space system that was never designed for use by those afflicted by addiction.
The deterioration of our public spaces is not caused by our drug epidemic, it's the logical outcome when the state fails to provide services to the most vulnerable. People literally have nowhere else to go.
Decriminalizing possession is one thing, but if the selling market is still illegal you really haven't done much other than keeping the jails a bit less full
Imagine that you're a politician trying to keep your job ahead of an election, and your opponent points to your policy making the lives of your constituents miserable. You understand that the argument you're making here would be political suicide, you'd be replaced, and the policy would be reversed.
How would you sell this in a way that could get you re-elected?
A good reason why every leadership position should have term limits. If you have no chance for re-election, might as well go ahead and put in policies which may hurt in the short term but are overall great in the long term.
Yeah I'm certainly in favor of term limits for almost every position, even if in some cases they'd be very generous limits. That sort of thing isn't a one-shot fix though, there's always the NEXT job to think about. "I'm a mayor for 4 years, limited by law, but I'll be governor next, and then a house member, then senator, etc." Or it might be about work in the private sector that comes after political life... incentives have a way of adapting themselves to this sort of remedy.
It's still a good idea, but term limits only really work as part of a much broader program of oversight and control over the incentives of politicians.
Imagine you're a politician trying to keep your job and during your term you magically solved a crisis (somehow, just pretend one of their 'plans' actually worked).
How would you persuade voters to NOT vote for that other guy, now that the problem is solved? How would you "secure more funding" for x,y, or z now that z doesn't exist? If you eradicate suffering, you can't blame the other side for it anymore. It's political suicide.
I don't think that's really a factor, because realistically the world is FAR from having any form of suffering eradicated. At best, most of what we can do is a good faith attempt to minimize suffering, and even that's incredibly difficult to do at scale.
I haven't been to Portland since 2018, but I have been to and seen LA and San Francisco downtowns. They didn't decriminalize, but their downtowns are pretty unpleasant too.
I wonder to what degree Portland is a product of its local policy (like this decriminalization/recriminalization) vs the national trends that are seen across the USA.
Decriminalization seems to lead to negative outcomes in every respect, including prostitution. I expect legalization is what's required as that would allow for optimal regulation and tax.
You could go the way of East Asia. That would be very difficult, but easy access to narcotics could lead to disastrous results.
I once saw a drug addict shoot up what looked like heroin in plain view of a police officer in Seattle. The officer did absolutely nothing. Needless to say downtown Seattle is also an extremely unpleasant place. In fact I'd say Seattle as a whole is gradually turning into a SF-like shithole. The only real solution to this is to make the decision makers experience the consequences of their luxury beliefs. How to do that in Seattle is not entirely clear, aside from that solitary case when a bunch of CHOP thugs marched to the mayor's home in 2020.
decriminalizing is a half assed way to try to help. The only issue with drug use isnt that you'll get arrested for possesion.
You need access to safe and clean drugs. Support systems need to be in place. The look of downtown isn't the only way to measure success. How many people aren't dying because there isn't a stigma around drug use, where clean and predictable drug doses (like alcohol) can be had, drug testing kits, safe pieces to use with, safe places to be etc
The "war on drugs" has been waged for more than 40+ years. It seems like it takes more than a few years, most of which was during the worst public health crisis in generations, to succeed.
Most incarceration is about helping those who aren't the ones suffering (evidenced by "... a very unpleasant place"). Not attacking you for your comment, just pointing out the paradigm we as a society have.
The support and treatment structures have remained essentially unchanged since Measure 110 passed, with holdups to funding and logistics at almost every level of the state's government. Oregon was already ranked almost dead last in addiction treatment, and that hasn't budged. I can't see how it would work without this other critical piece.
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) has some good coverage about this failure from the first couple years (which was never really rectified): https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/24/oregons-measure-110-i...
Also worth noting is that research has found no association with with Measure 110 and crime, and crime has been steadily falling since the measure was passed. (along with most other metro areas in the USA) https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/24/portland-crime-violen...