Oregon… stronger criminal penalties for drug possession
Oregon Democrats would enact stiffer potential criminal penalties for drug possession than they initially planned, under a negotiated bill that could get a hearing as early as Friday [2/23/24]. A new version of Democrats’ House Bill 4002… also weakens a provision that would have required police to offer to connect people caught with drugs to treatment rather than bringing them to jail.
“From the beginning, our organizations were excluded from your meetings,” read a letter sent Wednesday [2/21/24] to the three lawmakers from Oregonians for Safety and Recovery, a coalition that has urged lawmakers not to recriminalize drug possession. “Even when we were in your rooms and public hearings, our presence, our voices, and our pain for our communities was tokenized, managed, and marginalized.” … Eugene district attorney Christopher Parosa [stated] “What has developed in the last three years is not the utopian Shangri-La that we have been promised with ballot Measure 110,” said Parosa, “but rather a dystopian nightmare that is akin to a grim Hollywood movie.” … Haven Wheelock [of Outside In] observes that for all the controversy it’s caused, recriminalization may not have much immediate impact. Measure 110 funding for organizations like hers will likely continue. With an already overwhelmed system of law enforcement and public defense, it’s unclear how aggressively the police will be able to enforce any new laws. “There’s no quick fixes to the crisis we’re in,” says Wheelock, the harm reduction advocate, who supports the law and also works in the field of recovery. “I’m confident that without Measure 110 things would be far worse.” … Alice Lundell with the Oregon Justice Resource Center said she is concerned about how the proposed reversal could disproportionately harm communities of color. “Before House Bill 4002 or any amendments to it get passed, we should be looking at how that is going to affect Oregonians of color,” she said. According to Lundell, some of the rollbacks proposed in HB 4002 include the return of Boyd standard convictions, which allow prosecutors to win convictions against suspected drug dealers if they get caught with a certain amount of drugs – even if they didn’t deliver them. … “Please address drug addiction and homelessness,” Sandy Chung, executive director of the state’s ACLU chapter, asked legislators. “But do so with real solutions, not political theater.” Fentanyl, she pointed out, is also available in prisons. Punishing people with jail time, she argued, will not force them into recovery. … Measure 110 passed on the eve of a tsunami of twin public health crises in Oregon: an epidemic of cheap, widely available and extremely dangerous fentanyl, and a sharp escalation in the shortage of affordable housing. A recent study of its reach so far – by research organization RTI International – showed no correlation between the rise in overdoses and drug legalization. Other western states such as California and Washington are also overwhelmed by a devastating fentanyl crisis, the study’s authors point out, and have seen similar trends in overdoses and addiction without passing a sweeping decriminalization law like Oregon’s.
Original Article (The Guardian & Oregon Public Broadcasting & KOIN):
How Oregon turned on its own trailblazing drug law: ‘Not the utopia we were promised’ & Oregon Democrats agree to stronger criminal penalties for drug possession & Reverse Measure 110? Bill raises concerns of racial disparity in recriminalizing drugs
Artwork Fair Use: Ocwarner541
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