With Drug Recriminalization, Addiction Recovery Advocates Warn of ‘Inequitable Patchwork’ of Services – And Greater Burden to Black Oregonians

Measure 110 decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs and redirected drug users to recovery services when it was approved by voters in 2020. But concerns over community safety amid exploding fentanyl use prompted a backlash at the legislative level, leading to a significant retooling of the measure: law enforcement can again issue arrests, and, as critics of the rollback point out, counties can now be inconsistent about what kind of deflection services they provide – if any.

Tera Hurst
“Lawmakers promised that people using drugs would be immediately connected to care and avoid the criminal justice system,” Tera Hurst, executive director of the Health Justice Recovery Alliance, said last week. “We can’t arrest our way out of the overdose crisis.

"We all agree that addiction is a healthcare issue, and therefore should be treated as one.

"People having to wait for a court date to get care is only going to result in more tragic and senseless deaths.”

Return To Overpolicing? 

When it was first voted in and implemented, Measure 110 downgraded possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to a non-felony Class E violation, with a maximum fine of $100. Violators had the option of getting a health assessment for treatment in lieu of the fine. Measure 110 focused on creating addiction recovery centers as intake for those seeking addiction treatment -- a step that recognized Oregon’s lag in providing access to such services. It also recognized the importance of smaller community and culturally specific nonprofit groups that had already been doing the work to reduce harm and mitigate the damage of punitive drug policies.

Measure 110 was seen as a redress to the disastrous policies of the War on Drugs -- specifically the dramatically disproportionate sentencing and incarceration of Black Americans on drug possession charges. With the new changes, advocates warn that reintroducing the justice system to such a prominent role will have an outsized impact on Black Oregonians.

Julia Mines, executive director of The Miracles Club, has stated that Measure 110 funding helped exponentially expand the addiction and recovery services her organization offers to the BIPOC community.
The idea that the new law will create new racial disparity for Black and African American Oregonians comes directly from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission’s Racial Impact Analysis on House Bill 4002. Through modeling, the commission found Black and African Americans will likely be convicted of the new possession charge at nearly twice the rate of that of White people. 

“This stands to deepen the inequality in Oregon’s criminal justice system, which already stands as fifth-worst in the nation for arrest disparities,” the report found.

The Risks of a Patchwork Approach

The new law has been criticized as being vague and open to interpretation about how each county handles deflection centers and, in fact, nearly a quarter of Oregon’s counties don’t appear to have any plans for establishing such programs, according to data from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission.

Consider the large rural counties of Harney and Malheur. Both received $150,000 in grant funding, but while Malheur has implemented officer intervention and mobile crisis teams, neighboring Harney has only funded officer intervention. Harney's neighbor to the west, Lake County, has reported no plans for deflection centers. Seven other counties have likewise not applied for state grant funding, nor developed plans for deflection centers: Wallowa, Douglas, Coos, Curry, Jefferson, Wheeler and Sherman.

False Claims?

Many addiction recovery professionals argued that HB 4002 provided an over-correction that was based on bad assumptions.

For one, Measure 110 was not the cause of increasing overdoses in Oregon, according to Dan Hoover, an addiction medicine physician at OHSU who has worked on recovery policy.

“The first three research teams presenting at the Measure 110 Research Symposium had each independently come to the same conclusion, through different methods, that it is the arrival of fentanyl to Oregon that is responsible for the worsening outcomes we are seeing,” Hoover said in submitted testimony.

He added, “Oregon is not exceptional in our region with the rise in overdose deaths; the saturation of our west coast drug supply with fentanyl, which was coincident to Measure 110 passing, was a tipping point for us like every state in the U.S.”

Measure 110 supporters argued there had not been enough time to get one-stop recovery intake centers funded and running before the 2020 initiative was deemed a failure. For already established sites, Measure 110 funding provided a glimpse of what a robust network of deflection and treatment centers could accomplish.

“With less than one year of operations at Recovery Works’ Measure 110-funded medical detox center in SE Portland, our team has provided over 900 treatments, the majority to individuals struggling with deadly fentanyl addictions,” Joe Bazeghi, director of engagement at Recovery Works NW, said. “This single facility expanded medical detox capacity in the Portland Metro Area by nearly 20 percent, and would not have been possible without support from Measure 110.”

Candace Avalos, a former Citizen Review Committee member and current city council candidate for East Portland, warned that the changes would punish Oregonians for the state’s own failures.

“Measure 110 and decriminalized drug possession did not fail,” Avalos said in testimony submitted to the state's Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response. “But Oregon never fully committed to implementing it, leading to a lack of needed support for those struggling with addiction…(HB 4002) criminalizes people who are suffering from two crises: addiction and Oregon's gaps in services. A return to criminalizing addiction is dangerous. We know from our country's recent history and failed drug war policies that communities of color and other historically underserved populations will be disproportionately impacted and most at-risk of overpolicing and incarceration.”

She added, “The addiction crisis demands action, but we cannot punish people for our state's failures. People need rapid access to care, mobile crisis outreach, and housing solutions. And most critically, Oregonians need more treatment options. Many of these efforts are underway - due largely to Measure 110 as enacted by Oregon voters – but given that the gaps in services were so vast, there's much more to be done.”