Oregon Democrats' Phony Hard Drug Recriminalization

Their proposed reforms would allow them to say they’ve done something about the problem without actually doing anything

Measure 110 boosters deliver petition signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State in boxes promising outcomes the opposite of what hard drug decriminalization has actually provided.

Hi, I wrote a piece for National Review Online about Oregon Democrats’ disappointing Measure 110 reform bill, which the legislature will consider beginning next week. The first couple of paragraphs are excerpted below. This piece is behind NRO’s paywall, but you can read the whole thing for free here, because you know people. JE

Hard-drug decriminalization, a longtime project of George Soros and other progressives, has been a disaster in Oregon, the first state to try widespread decriminalization. In 2020, Soros’s decriminalization-advocacy outfit, the Drug Policy Alliance, spent $6 million to cajole Oregon voters into decriminalizing possession of small amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine, making Oregon the first state to do so.

The results have not been pretty. Overdose fatalities were increasing even before the enactment of Measure 110, the drug-decriminalization law, and have surged since. Between June and August 2023, ten Portland minors overdosed on hard drugs, mostly fentanyl. Five kids — a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a five-year-old, and two 15-year-olds — died.

Read the rest for free here at National Review Online.

With the legislature set to take up competing Measure 110 reform bills next week, now might be a good time to check out some of the approximately 17 articles and podcasts I’ve written and recorded primarily about Measure 110. On review, and eschewing humility for a moment, I think I’d put the Oregon Roundup’s coverage of Oregon’s deadly experiment with hard drug decriminalization up against anyone’s.