“Oregon’s three-and-a-half-year experiment with decriminalization is over. Last September, the state legislature overrode the ballot initiative, known as Measure 110, and recriminalized drugs.
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With few treatment facilities and lax enforcement, Portland became a safe haven for drug users to pitch tents on the street and get high out in the open. A meth user named Michael, who lives in a tent with his girlfriend on a Portland sidewalk, told Reason that he saw more drug users flow into the city after decriminalization.
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“When you look at the frustration that was built up by people who were just doing the things that everybody gets to do, get to take their kids to school, go to work. I mean, I felt it the same way,” says Schmidt. “I don’t like seeing people shooting up where I have to explain to my kids what’s happening right now, and then also maybe not feeling safe because you’re not sure if a person’s in their right mind. Like, that’s not okay.”
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decriminalization as a concept is “obviously not” doomed to fail. He points to several Western European countries and cities that have successfully implemented decriminalization policies for years.
Portugal became the first country to decriminalize all drugs in 2001. Overdoses and disease transmission fell, inspiring similar approaches in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Zurich, where the police enforced “zero tolerance” against open-air drug scenes with the goal of moving drug use off the streets and indoors.
“When you decriminalize drug possession, that doesn’t mean that you’re decriminalizing drug use on the streets. It doesn’t mean that you are decriminalizing disorderly behavior on the street. Those things need to go hand in hand. That’s what the European approach taught us,” says Nadelmann. “That sort of pragmatism is really what we need in the U.S.”
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A robust treatment infrastructure and protection of public spaces made Portugal’s decriminalization sustainable. When the country decriminalized drugs, police stepped up enforcement as the policy took effect. The authorities in Lisbon dismantled shanty towns, relocated their inhabitants, and broke up an open-air drug scene known as “the supermarket of drugs.” As Zurich decriminalized, authorities took a “zero tolerance” approach towards large public gatherings of drug users, which they described as “destructive to co-existence.”
In Portland, by contrast, decriminalization coincided with the defund the police movement and a 6 percent budget reduction for the Portland Police Bureau.
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as decriminalization took effect in Portland, the city effectively paused street camping removals because of COVID-19, exacerbating a decades-long unsheltered homelessness problem.
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The fentanyl epidemic caused a surge in overdose deaths in Portland starting in 2016. Overdoses soared in 2019, two years before decriminalization was implemented.
Only full commercial legalization could stop the fentanyl crisis because it would allow users to buy the drugs they’re seeking from reputable manufacturers, as has happened with cannabis, instead of a black market dominated by cartels selling extremely potent and deadly fentanyl.
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Portugal’s system can punish drug users for refusing treatment, but it’s rare in practice. Most who appear before the drug panel get off with a warning. Those deemed to have an addiction are referred for treatment. And a small subset of those refuse and face fines or other sanctions.”
https://reason.com/video/2025/10/01/how-oregons-drug-experiment-backfired