…Oregon… the war on drugs amid fentanyl crisis
Grant Hartley, the Multnomah County director of Metropolitan Public Defenders, predicted the new citations [built into HB 4002] would overload the system. His office is already short-staffed, with public defenders averaging 100 cases apiece, he said. “We have a humanitarian crisis,” Hartley said. “It’s embarrassing to see people out on the street. But injecting thousands more cases into the system is going to make it collapse.”
In Portland, violent crime fell 4% last year compared to 2022, along with a 22% drop in overall shootings, according to the Portland Police Bureau. “We’re only going to see a cycle of despair if we continue criminalization,” said Emily Kaltenbach, senior director of state advocacy and criminal legal reform at the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit group that supported Oregon’s decriminalization measure. “This is classic scapegoatism,” said Victor Gresser, a San Francisco-based mental health counselor. “This is classic discrimination and stigmatization.” … “It’s a politics bill, not a policy bill,” said Tera Hurst, executive director of the Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance. “People don’t like seeing people doing drugs on the streets, but they’re doing drugs on the streets because they don’t have a home.” … The biggest hurdles to helping others get sober are stigmatization and marginalization, they said, and peer outreach is paramount to build trust rather than coerce people into treatment through the criminal justice system.
Original Article (NBC):
Progressive California and Oregon revive the war on drugs amid fentanyl crisis
Artwork Fair Use: Steve Morgan
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