Oregon just said no.

The Drug Policy Alliance handpicked the state as a model for global hard drug decriminalization. Last week, Oregon soundly rejected both.

Supporters deliver petition signatures to get Measure 110, the nation’s first hard drug decriminalization law, on the Oregon ballot in 2020. Overdoses skyrocketed in the state, and the legislature overwhelmingly voted to recriminalize last week.

Oregon, the sparsely populated blue state chosen by the international kingpins of hard drug decriminalization as the ideal showcase for their offerings, just said no. Overwhelming majorities in the Democrat-ruled legislature voted to undo key provisions of Ballot Measure 110, the decriminalization measure overwhelmingly passed by the state’s voters just four years ago. The sudden and stark reversal of decriminalization’s political appeal in Oregon, led by a bottom-up voter reaction to a spiraling drug crisis that worsened under Measure 110 and culminating in last week’s legislative action, should serve as a beam of hope emanating from a most unlikely source.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a New York nonprofit co-founded and partially funded by progressive megadonor George Soros, is the muscle behind drug decriminalization, an idea long fomenting in the more extreme corners of progressivism. The main progressive critique of drug prohibition is that it is racist, with punishment falling most heavily on racial minorities.

The DPA’s decades-long strategy to combat what it calls the “War on Drugs,” laid out succinctly on DPA’s website, was to decriminalize marijuana, legalize marijuana first for medical and then recreational use, then to follow the same trajectory for hard drugs. The hoped-for result: a “non-punitive, equitable, and regulated drug market.”

Americans gradually grew more comfortable with a lenient approach to crime and drugs, an indulgence made possible by generations of relatively low crime. In 2018, congressional Republicans and Donald Trump joined with Democrats in an attempt to file down some of the rougher edges of the criminal justice system. The time was right for the DPA to act.

Oregon had been an eager and early participant in the early segments of the drug decriminalization arc. The state was among the first to decriminalize and then legalize pot, first for medical and then for recreational use. It was dabbling with psilocybin legalization, and had a well-earned reputation for trying progressive ideas first: the vanguard of progressivism. Not coincidentally, Oregonians had long voted overwhelmingly for Democrats and many proudly embraced their progressive image. The state has a small population conveniently served by one mid-size and a few tiny media markets, making it relatively easy, and inexpensive, to reach and influence voters.

It’s no surprise, then, that in 2020 DPA’s advocacy organization, Drug Policy Action, chose to target Oregon for its first hard drug decriminalization foray. It confided as much in a filing with the Oregon Department of Justice that year:

Drug Policy Action designed Measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act of 2020, and spearheaded the campaign in partnership with a broad and deep coalition of state-based allies. In Oregon, we saw a profound need to treat drug use as a health issue and not a criminal problem and enough of an opportunity at the ballot that we decided to move forward with our bold plan.

The DPAs funded the campaign to pass Measure 110 to the tune of about $5 million in reported campaign contributions, by far the largest contributor to the $6 million effort. It surely spent additional large sums of unreported “advocacy” funds to create the illusion of the “broad and deep coalition of state-based allies” that an unconcerned and ideologically sympathetic Oregon media reported as the source of Measure 110’s support. Opponents of the measure, mostly law enforcement groups, spent only $167,000 fighting it.

Oregon voters did as DPA predicted in November 2020, voting to decriminalize hard drugs by a healthy 58-42 margin. The next day, DPA’s executive director Kassandra Frederique took a victory lap:

In a historic, paradigm-shifting win and arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, the nation’s first all-drug decriminalization measure. This confirms a substantial shift in public support in favor of treating drug use with health services rather than with criminalization. ... Drug possession is the most arrested offense in the United States, with one arrest every 23 seconds. Last night, Oregon showed the world that a more humane, compassionate approach is possible. Measure 110 will serve as a model and starting point for states across the country to decriminalize drugs.

The model faltered as soon as it stepped on the runway. Because the DPA’s goal was, its raison d’etre is, legalization (“a well-regulated drug market”), decriminalization came first, before marijuana tax revenue became available for housing and services connected to addiction treatment. On February 1, 2021, possession of drugs including fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine was decriminalized. Possession of “user amounts,” as opposed to larger, “dealer amounts” of those drugs, had been a Class A misdemeanor, with sentences up to a year in jail. Measure 110 made possession a Class E violation: a maximum $100 ticket with an addiction hotline phone number on the back.

Almost no one called the hotline, and even fewer requested the addiction treatment information on offer. In the first nine months of decriminalization, only eight (8) people statewide requested that information. Police largely stopped handing out the tickets, because doing so was a waste of time. An active fentanyl addict observed by police indulging in his drug of choice was exceedingly unlikely to pay the fine, show up in court, or engage in addiction treatment. Measure 110 eliminated the threat of jail time just as the fentanyl plague hit Oregon with fatal gusto.

As open air fentanyl markets popped up around downtown Portland, a debate ensued. Was Oregon’s fentanyl-fueled drug crisis – including a nation-leading 1,500% surge in fentanyl overdose deaths – made worse by Measure 110’s drug decriminalization? Oregonians seemed to think so, but DPA and its allies worked overtime to convince them not to believe their lying eyes.

With polls showing Oregonians of all stripes, including Democrats, turning sharply in favor of Measure 110 repeal, DPA and its allies swung back into action. It could not allow Oregon, its model for the drug decriminalization it sought globally, to reject decriminalization.

What followed was an exceedingly far-reaching effort by a special interest to protect its position in the face of public opposition.

The DPA established and funded nonprofits in Oregon to defend Measure 110 full time. Those organizations placed staff on a state committee that distributes Measure 110 funds, which they used to steer public dollars to defending decriminalization from repeal.

In 2022, with public blowback against decriminalization gaining steam, DPA gave a $50,000 campaign donation to Tina Kotek, the Democrat then running for, and now serving as, governor. It spread thousands to legislative Democrats likely to be in the thick of any effort to repeal decriminalization.

A chief petitioner of Measure 110 employed by a nonprofit that received $2.1 million in funding from the measure co-authored a study purporting to show no correlation between decriminalization and Oregon’s shattering increase in overdose deaths. Somehow, the Journal of the American Medical Association published, and DPA and allies publicized, the study without mentioning the co-author’s blatant conflicts of interest.

When the legislature convened last month to begin work on recriminalization, DPA, predictably, resorted to calling any legislator who voted for recriminalization racist. It is a testament to the unavoidable failure of Measure 110 politically and as policy that majorities of Democrats in both houses of the legislature voted to recriminalize hard drugs withstood those criticisms and joined with Republicans to recriminalize drugs.

Oregon is indeed a model for drug decriminalization, just not the type of model DPA envisioned. Having suffered defeat in the state it deemed most likely to welcome decriminalization, DPA’s Kassandra Frederique blamed the State of Oregon for failing to spend enough on drug treatment, to spend enough on housing, to provide more healthcare to addicts.

DPA’s scorched earth response to its failure in Oregon will serve as further warning to other states should they consider decriminalization. Turns out people don’t like serving as models for a fatally flawed policy.