WSJ: Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs
WSJ: Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs
EUGENE, Ore.—Soon after Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugs in 2020, Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab helpline.
People sprawled on sidewalks and using fentanyl with no fear of consequence have become a common sight in cities such as Eugene and Portland. Business owners and local leaders are upset, but so are liberal voters who hoped decriminalization would lead to more people getting help. In reality, few drug users are taking advantage of new state-funded rehabilitation programs.
Anybody could have seen this coming, but somehow, they still think they are smarter than the rest of us. In Econ 100, you learn that people respond to incentives. Remove disincentives to take hard drugs, and more people take hard drugs.
The fundamental problem, according to law-enforcement officers and researchers, is that the threat of jail time hasn’t been replaced with a new incentive for people struggling with addiction to seek treatment.
Do law enforcement officers take Econ? Probably some, but Econ is just common sense condensed into a theoretic framework. Some people don’t break laws because they don’t want to go to jail. Others don’t break laws because they don’t want a criminal record. There are people who simply follow the rules. Decriminalize hard drugs, and all those people are now in play.
Some 6,000 tickets have been issued for drug possession since decriminalization went into effect in 2021, but just 92 people have called and completed assessments needed to connect them to services, according to the nonprofit that operates the helpline.
Reality proves that their operating assumptions were completely wrong.
“It was not a crazy thing to try at all, but I think they misunderstood addiction,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford professor who has studied the measure.
Yes, it was a crazy thing to do. Keith Humphreys is a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. A statement like that should discredit him, but it won’t. It’s no surprise that Humphreys was a Senior Policy Advisor for White House Office of National Drug Control Policy while our pothead President Obama was in office.
Advocates of drug decriminalization blame Oregon’s continued problems on nationwide trends, including the rise of deadly fentanyl and increased homelessness.
Since advocates of decriminalization are making excuses for this destructive policy even after the data is coming in, we can assume the policy is working as they had anticipated. Why did they want to ruin the lives of the people of Oregon?
They say Measure 110 is already succeeding at one of its goals: keeping people out of the criminal-justice system for drug possession. About 4,000 people were arrested for drug offenses in Oregon in 2022, down from 11,000 in 2020.
Well sure. If drug laws are abolished, then few people will break drug laws. Still though, what did the 4000 people do to get arrested for drug offenses? The article might have looked into that.
Michelle Loew, a 56-year-old bookstore clerk in Eugene, voted for it enthusiastically. A Grateful Dead fan who has experimented with mind-altering substances, Loew long supported liberalizing Oregon’s drug laws to be more like those of the Netherlands.
Ms Loew is 56 years-old and working as a clerk in an old fashioned store. She sees that serious drug use hasn’t negatively effected her prospects in life. It must be the same for others.
Netherlands is a small country with an intact culture. Choosing one element, decriminalizing drugs, without considering the entire context of Dutch society shouldn’t be expected to work.
But as she watched public drug use flourish in this city of 175,000, she feared she had voted the wrong way.
She should fear that her brain isn’t very good and that she should refrain from voting.
The man said getting arrested three years ago motivated him to get clean. He got a job at a gas station and stayed sober because it was required while he was on probation. But as soon as he finished probation last fall, he was back on drugs.
If people are free to do they want, some will, intentionally or not, destroy themselves. Society is destabilized when people are free to act, but society takes the consequences. Oregon could establish drug dens in old shopping malls or abandoned bookstores to keep the junkie zombies off the streets. If someone overdoses, don’t go to extraordinary efforts to save them.
“There is an old expression that states are the laboratories of democracy,” said Williams. “But that’s sort of distorted when you’re not the laboratory but you’re the lab rat.”
People in Oregon decided to conduct this experiment. It’s a shame that a formerly nice state like Oregon had to be destroyed to learn this obvious lesson. The TV show, Portlandia, wouldn’t be charming and quirky today because in just 5 years after the series finale, shambling zombies are shooting up on the sidewalk.
In 1995, I spent a month in Oregon at the Catlin Gable school near Portland. The city was known as the “City of Roses”, was proud of it’s light-rail system and adored Powell’s bookstore. My impression was that it was a charming city with many little cafes to get a great lunch. Nobody thinks of Portland like that now.