A succinct account of how we got ourselves into this crisis, and how we’re probably not going to make the tough decisions to get ourselves out. A tragedy. Great work, Jeff.
That's how we solve our problems in Oregon. Create a crisis. Screw things up with a "fix."
Not to worry. The eggs we now buy at the grocery store are from cage free chickens. So, apparently it's better for poor folks to pay about $4.50 a dozen instead of a pre-pandemic-lockdown price of about $1.69. Time for a new subsidy.
As a moderate Democrat who wants Measure 110 repealed, I feel powerless to make it happen. I know that no matter how frequently or eloquently I make my case for repealing M110 to my elected state representatives, I will have as much impact as a bug on a windshield compared to organized progressive insiders and the progressive Democratic establishment in Salem. Oh, if only I had a spare $5 million to use as a megaphone and a hammer.
Hoping I might be too much of a pessimist, I did what good-government types urge engaged citizens to do and called the people who represent me in the Oregon Senate and House of Representatives. Being a political nobody, I called the same number as all the other nobodies out there use.
I just got off the phone with the office of state senator Lew Frederick. The person I spoke to did not answer my simple yes-or-no question: Does the Senator support the recriminalization of drugs? Things were off to a great start.
What I got instead was a rambling response to the effect that the Senator is dead set against any changes to M110 that would have a disproportionate negative impact on what I take to be the Senator's preferred constituency, "communities of color."
The Senator does, however, favor increased penalties for public drug use and use on public transit. He's seen the polls. then.
Senator Frederick does not, I was assured, want to see people put in jail. That prompted me to chide the young man for parroting one of M110 proponents preferred scare tactics, which it to make the public believe that the alternative to retaining M110 is throwing users in jail. It is not. If memory serves me, I think the staffer even brought up the war on drugs, another of the pro-drug crowd's preferred boogeymen.
It seems the Senator's chief solution to the crisis M110 has created is to set up all the treatment options that should have been in place before decriminalization was effective. As critics of M110 know or should know, by law all "treatment" in Oregon must follow harm reduction principles. I've sent the Senator critiques of harm reduction several times, but this lad evidently wasn't aware of them. He failed to see the obvious problems with a drug policy that seeks to eliminate the stigma around addiction while stigmatizing urging addicts to desist in favor of detox, rehab and sobriety.
When finally pressed, the staffer said that Frederick does not favor full recriminalization. When I asked him why, I learned the Senator doesn't support full recriminalization because he doesn't think it would work. Having heard enough, I signed off.
Two things are clear: One is that the Senator is making a show of being responsive to public opinion by targeting public drug use and use on public transit. The devil is in the details, though, and even though the Senator has a very nice web site with lots of room for, say, explaining what increasing the penalties for public drug use would and would not do, there is no such explanation for his constituents and other interested parties to see. I guess that if a person really wants to know the details of Senator Frederick's position on the M110 crisis they had better be a Salem insider who's tapped into non-public networks of communication.
The other is that the Senator's blab about not harming colored communities, not supporting full recriminalization and somehow flooding the state with treatment facilities is intended to demonstrate he's holding the progressive line. The unaccountable, opaque treatment non-profits who'd stand to gain from Frederick's largesse must be thrilled.
So, in conclusion, if anyone knows a moderate Democrat with aspirations of representing District 22 in the legislature, please urge them to challenge Senator Frederick in the next primary.
State Representative Sanchez's office was not answering the phone in person. In a burst of optimism, after telling the machine I wanted to see M110 repealed, I asked it to have someone call me back to explain Representative Sanchez's position on the controversy.
This comment would not be complete without the critique of harm reduction I've been developing recently. Because there is probably overlap in the readership of this Substack and Portland Dissent's, please accept my apologies if you've already seen this piece.
In the discussions about M110 that I've listened to, there's a failure to fully appreciate exactly how pernicious "harm reduction" ideology really is. Even among critics of M110, there is often an acknowledgement that harm reduction does some good, followed by head-shaking and mutterings about how some of the harm reduction folks are really nuts.
No, the whole thing is nuts because it is premised on amoral beliefs that are contrary to human nature and experience and harmful to society.
First and foremost is the notion that all of society must center addicts' autonomy. What autonomy does a person have when their entire existence revolves around securing drugs and taking them? What moral authority do the intellectual architects of harm reduction possess that gives them sole right to decide that an addicts' autonomy outweighs the harm that addiction does to the addict, to his loved ones, to the neighborhood and to the public, businesses and society? How dare they?
Does anyone think that more than 50 percent of Oregon voters would approve of the ideology behind the following testimony before Seattle City Council last year?
" 'I know it can be controversial,' Hepatitis Education Project program director Amber Tejada responded, but 'one of the keys that I see is we want to facilitate the autonomy of people that use drugs. There are folks that don’t want to stop using drugs. There are folks for whom abstinence is not how they measure success in life. … Our mission, what we have been able to do really successfully with this program, is to show that people can use drugs safely, and we can help folks get access to resources if that is something they are interested in.' " [1]
"If that's something they are interested in." LOL She couldn't even bring herself to say the words "recovery" and "sobriety." Since the thrust of harm reduction is dissolve all shame and guilt about drug use and make it as safe and easy as possible, when would an addict ever be "interested" in sobriety?
Equally corrosive is the rejection of morality - notions of right and wrong - in favor of a no-judgement stance towards drug use even when meth and fentanyl are involved. What critics are missing is that the no-judgment ethos is rooted in a deep hostility toward morality as a tool for ordering society.
Here's an early academic apologist for harm reduction saying the quiet part out loud:
"Government strategies which aim to produce a population of healthy, enterprising and productive citizens, clearly require scrutiny and active forms of resistance because they subjectify individuals and limit the possibility of different forms of existence." [2]
It's so tempting to do a go-fund-me to raise airfare to bring that sociologist from Australia to Portland where she'd see plenty of her "different forms of existence" on full display. Heck, she could try a couple of them out for the sake of building a store of lived experience.
More to the point, what is Oregon's harm-reduction based drug policy but an "active form of resistance" to the near universal desire among Oregonians to live among a "population of healthy, enterprising and productive individuals"?
Until these points are embraced and amplified by the heavyweights who oppose M110, the public and lawmakers will fail to understand what all the fuss over harm reduction is all about. What's wrong with giving users clean needles or testing their drugs for adulterants? What kind of monsters are the anti-M110 folks, anyway?
As the statistics continue to show the failures of 110 it is truly mystifying that our so called leaders are considering anything but a repeal.
I also question the use of “Oregonians”. Are you considered a resident when you migrate here to enjoy our lawless environment but fail to participate in any actions that would actually make you a resident?
It seems that the train has now really gone off the tracks so to speak..
Great report, Jeff...particularly the concluding lines about nonprofits with "Orwellian" names. (Rule of thumb: progressives advocate things that they are actually tearing down.)
The so-called debate is really a classic machine argument about patronage dollars. The key is the nexus of government over-taxation and money redeployment through opaque 501-c-3 "nonprofits." Which are merely cutouts: think of that $-half-million transferred to La Mota, as well as the machine's attempted coup of any real regulation of grass (with the eager assistance of The Oregonian through the "Bourbongate" distraction). They got called on that one...barely. There's worse--count on it.
The ever-revolving door between the nonprofits and government (with GuvTina graduating from the Neo-Marxist Oregon Food Bank...which doesn't have anything to do with food or banks, unless it's their own account) ought to be a leading indicator of the way the game is played.
Big media lacks the expertise--or the will--to detech the journalism firepower necessary to root around in that opaque world. Jeff, you've done terrific work at the margins...it's the biggest unreported scandal in the state. I hope you keep digging.
Make that 5 Bendites who won't visit the Bottle Drop. We just eat the 10 cents per can and trash them. Not worth exposing my family or myself to that mess. Bend is a tragic story of what happens when liberals take over a city. 15 years ago this was heaven. Now, not so much.
I suspect we're also #1 in well funded and pernicious non-profits that are a hell of a lot more interested in keeping their cash flowing and politicans bought than actually helping their proported clients
the powers that be have a strangle hold on Oregon, and are too entrenched to be affected by anything but a huge influx of money from people who could care enough to out spend the Soros gang ands its ilk. keep up the good fight, Jeff. the "Light Brigade" was a wake up call for Churchill, though he may not have realized at the time.
A succinct account of how we got ourselves into this crisis, and how we’re probably not going to make the tough decisions to get ourselves out. A tragedy. Great work, Jeff.
That's how we solve our problems in Oregon. Create a crisis. Screw things up with a "fix."
Not to worry. The eggs we now buy at the grocery store are from cage free chickens. So, apparently it's better for poor folks to pay about $4.50 a dozen instead of a pre-pandemic-lockdown price of about $1.69. Time for a new subsidy.
As a moderate Democrat who wants Measure 110 repealed, I feel powerless to make it happen. I know that no matter how frequently or eloquently I make my case for repealing M110 to my elected state representatives, I will have as much impact as a bug on a windshield compared to organized progressive insiders and the progressive Democratic establishment in Salem. Oh, if only I had a spare $5 million to use as a megaphone and a hammer.
Hoping I might be too much of a pessimist, I did what good-government types urge engaged citizens to do and called the people who represent me in the Oregon Senate and House of Representatives. Being a political nobody, I called the same number as all the other nobodies out there use.
I just got off the phone with the office of state senator Lew Frederick. The person I spoke to did not answer my simple yes-or-no question: Does the Senator support the recriminalization of drugs? Things were off to a great start.
What I got instead was a rambling response to the effect that the Senator is dead set against any changes to M110 that would have a disproportionate negative impact on what I take to be the Senator's preferred constituency, "communities of color."
The Senator does, however, favor increased penalties for public drug use and use on public transit. He's seen the polls. then.
Senator Frederick does not, I was assured, want to see people put in jail. That prompted me to chide the young man for parroting one of M110 proponents preferred scare tactics, which it to make the public believe that the alternative to retaining M110 is throwing users in jail. It is not. If memory serves me, I think the staffer even brought up the war on drugs, another of the pro-drug crowd's preferred boogeymen.
It seems the Senator's chief solution to the crisis M110 has created is to set up all the treatment options that should have been in place before decriminalization was effective. As critics of M110 know or should know, by law all "treatment" in Oregon must follow harm reduction principles. I've sent the Senator critiques of harm reduction several times, but this lad evidently wasn't aware of them. He failed to see the obvious problems with a drug policy that seeks to eliminate the stigma around addiction while stigmatizing urging addicts to desist in favor of detox, rehab and sobriety.
When finally pressed, the staffer said that Frederick does not favor full recriminalization. When I asked him why, I learned the Senator doesn't support full recriminalization because he doesn't think it would work. Having heard enough, I signed off.
Two things are clear: One is that the Senator is making a show of being responsive to public opinion by targeting public drug use and use on public transit. The devil is in the details, though, and even though the Senator has a very nice web site with lots of room for, say, explaining what increasing the penalties for public drug use would and would not do, there is no such explanation for his constituents and other interested parties to see. I guess that if a person really wants to know the details of Senator Frederick's position on the M110 crisis they had better be a Salem insider who's tapped into non-public networks of communication.
The other is that the Senator's blab about not harming colored communities, not supporting full recriminalization and somehow flooding the state with treatment facilities is intended to demonstrate he's holding the progressive line. The unaccountable, opaque treatment non-profits who'd stand to gain from Frederick's largesse must be thrilled.
So, in conclusion, if anyone knows a moderate Democrat with aspirations of representing District 22 in the legislature, please urge them to challenge Senator Frederick in the next primary.
State Representative Sanchez's office was not answering the phone in person. In a burst of optimism, after telling the machine I wanted to see M110 repealed, I asked it to have someone call me back to explain Representative Sanchez's position on the controversy.
This comment would not be complete without the critique of harm reduction I've been developing recently. Because there is probably overlap in the readership of this Substack and Portland Dissent's, please accept my apologies if you've already seen this piece.
In the discussions about M110 that I've listened to, there's a failure to fully appreciate exactly how pernicious "harm reduction" ideology really is. Even among critics of M110, there is often an acknowledgement that harm reduction does some good, followed by head-shaking and mutterings about how some of the harm reduction folks are really nuts.
No, the whole thing is nuts because it is premised on amoral beliefs that are contrary to human nature and experience and harmful to society.
First and foremost is the notion that all of society must center addicts' autonomy. What autonomy does a person have when their entire existence revolves around securing drugs and taking them? What moral authority do the intellectual architects of harm reduction possess that gives them sole right to decide that an addicts' autonomy outweighs the harm that addiction does to the addict, to his loved ones, to the neighborhood and to the public, businesses and society? How dare they?
Does anyone think that more than 50 percent of Oregon voters would approve of the ideology behind the following testimony before Seattle City Council last year?
" 'I know it can be controversial,' Hepatitis Education Project program director Amber Tejada responded, but 'one of the keys that I see is we want to facilitate the autonomy of people that use drugs. There are folks that don’t want to stop using drugs. There are folks for whom abstinence is not how they measure success in life. … Our mission, what we have been able to do really successfully with this program, is to show that people can use drugs safely, and we can help folks get access to resources if that is something they are interested in.' " [1]
"If that's something they are interested in." LOL She couldn't even bring herself to say the words "recovery" and "sobriety." Since the thrust of harm reduction is dissolve all shame and guilt about drug use and make it as safe and easy as possible, when would an addict ever be "interested" in sobriety?
Equally corrosive is the rejection of morality - notions of right and wrong - in favor of a no-judgement stance towards drug use even when meth and fentanyl are involved. What critics are missing is that the no-judgment ethos is rooted in a deep hostility toward morality as a tool for ordering society.
Here's an early academic apologist for harm reduction saying the quiet part out loud:
"Government strategies which aim to produce a population of healthy, enterprising and productive citizens, clearly require scrutiny and active forms of resistance because they subjectify individuals and limit the possibility of different forms of existence." [2]
It's so tempting to do a go-fund-me to raise airfare to bring that sociologist from Australia to Portland where she'd see plenty of her "different forms of existence" on full display. Heck, she could try a couple of them out for the sake of building a store of lived experience.
More to the point, what is Oregon's harm-reduction based drug policy but an "active form of resistance" to the near universal desire among Oregonians to live among a "population of healthy, enterprising and productive individuals"?
Until these points are embraced and amplified by the heavyweights who oppose M110, the public and lawmakers will fail to understand what all the fuss over harm reduction is all about. What's wrong with giving users clean needles or testing their drugs for adulterants? What kind of monsters are the anti-M110 folks, anyway?
[1] Barnett, Erica C. "Council Member Wants to Know: Why Isn't Harm Reduction Abstinence Based?" PubliCola. 24 May 2023. https://publicola.com/2023/05/24/council-member-wants-to-know-why-isnt-harm-reduction-abstinence-based/
[2] Keane, Helen. "Critiques of harm reduction, morality and the promise of human rights." International Journal of Drug Policy 14 (2003) 227–232. 231-232. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0955395902001512
As the statistics continue to show the failures of 110 it is truly mystifying that our so called leaders are considering anything but a repeal.
I also question the use of “Oregonians”. Are you considered a resident when you migrate here to enjoy our lawless environment but fail to participate in any actions that would actually make you a resident?
It seems that the train has now really gone off the tracks so to speak..
Great report, Jeff...particularly the concluding lines about nonprofits with "Orwellian" names. (Rule of thumb: progressives advocate things that they are actually tearing down.)
The so-called debate is really a classic machine argument about patronage dollars. The key is the nexus of government over-taxation and money redeployment through opaque 501-c-3 "nonprofits." Which are merely cutouts: think of that $-half-million transferred to La Mota, as well as the machine's attempted coup of any real regulation of grass (with the eager assistance of The Oregonian through the "Bourbongate" distraction). They got called on that one...barely. There's worse--count on it.
The ever-revolving door between the nonprofits and government (with GuvTina graduating from the Neo-Marxist Oregon Food Bank...which doesn't have anything to do with food or banks, unless it's their own account) ought to be a leading indicator of the way the game is played.
Big media lacks the expertise--or the will--to detech the journalism firepower necessary to root around in that opaque world. Jeff, you've done terrific work at the margins...it's the biggest unreported scandal in the state. I hope you keep digging.
Make that 5 Bendites who won't visit the Bottle Drop. We just eat the 10 cents per can and trash them. Not worth exposing my family or myself to that mess. Bend is a tragic story of what happens when liberals take over a city. 15 years ago this was heaven. Now, not so much.
Well at least we're #1 in something
I suspect we're also #1 in well funded and pernicious non-profits that are a hell of a lot more interested in keeping their cash flowing and politicans bought than actually helping their proported clients
the powers that be have a strangle hold on Oregon, and are too entrenched to be affected by anything but a huge influx of money from people who could care enough to out spend the Soros gang ands its ilk. keep up the good fight, Jeff. the "Light Brigade" was a wake up call for Churchill, though he may not have realized at the time.
I just appreciate you sharing the REAL FACTS! Great work!