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Oregon’s drug decriminalization gets poor marks on audit

Published

5 months ago

6 minute read

By Andrew Selsky in Salem

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization has had a rocky start, but Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said Thursday in releasing an audit of the program that it’s too early to call it a failure.

Decriminalization of personal-use amounts of drugs, approved by voters in 2020 under Ballot Measure 110, was supposed to channel hundreds of millions of dollars of marijuana tax revenues into drug treatment and harm reduction programs. But that hasn’t yet translated into an improved care network for a state with the second-highest rate of substance use disorder in the nation and ranked 50th for access to treatment.

“When Oregonians passed Measure 110, we expected that our loved ones battling addiction would have access to treatment and a chance for a better life,” Fagan told reporters in a Zoom press conference. “We expected there will be fewer of our neighbors struggling on the streets.”

Instead, the funding has been slow getting out of the gate and instances of drug abuse and overdose deaths have increased.

Other states that might consider following Oregon’s path — which a few countries including Portugal have taken — will likely assess how well, or badly, it has gone.

Asked in the news conference what grade he would assign the program thus far, auditor Ian Green said “maybe a C.” Audits Director Kip Memmott gave it a D and Fagan said she’d assign an “incomplete.”

The director of the Oregon Health Authority, which helps establish the measure’s drug treatment aspects, blamed the funding delays on “ambitious implementation timelines and stretched OHA staffing resources due to the pandemic,” along with a shift in decision-making roles that required building new relationships.

“I recognize that Measure 110’s success depends on Oregon’s ability to solve many larger challenges in the behavioral health system, such as the need to expand treatment capacity and better support counselors and other workers,” said OHA Director James Schroeder, who was appointed this month by recently elected Gov. Tina Kotek.

Schroeder said Kotek has made improving Oregon’s behavioral health system and Measure 110 implementation a top priority.

Among the audit’s recommendations: The health authority should publish a plan by September on integrating Measure 110 into the state’s overall behavioral health system; improve data collection so the ballot measure’s effectiveness can be tracked by policymakers and the public; and set clear expectations, roles and responsibilities.

Another setback of the measure is the lack of people with substance abuse disorders who are seeking help after being ticketed for drug possession and given a hotline number.

In the first year after the new approach took effect in February 2021, only 1% of people who received citations for possessing controlled substances sought help via the new hotline.

Keith Humphreys, an addiction researcher and professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, said the audit “is commendably candid in acknowledging the bureaucratic failures that produce insufficient and uncoordinated services, and the reforms proposed to fix that situation are sensible.”

“In contrast, the report does not deal adequately with that fact that the statewide effort to use tickets/fines for drug possession to incentivize people to enter treatment was a complete failure,” Humphreys, a former senior adviser in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in an email.

Oregon officials are wrong to assume that increasing access to treatment alone will lead to most addicted individuals seeking drug treatment, he said.

“Without some external pressure, most people will not attempt to reduce their drug use via treatment or other means,” Humphreys said.

Fagan, whose brother and late mother had drug dependency issues, said the old system of criminalizing drug possession, combined with a lack of available treatment, simply did not work.

“I was one of the strong majority of Oregon voters who voted for Measure 110 because the status quo had failed my family and people who I love,” Fagan said. She described how she and another brother some four years ago tried to find somewhere to take their sibling after he was ready to get treatment.

“My other brother and I called all over, and we couldn’t find an inpatient facility to take him, despite the fact that he had really hit rock bottom,” Fagan said, adding that her brother is now successfully undergoing treatment.

“Make no mistake, this is a matter of life and death,” Fagan said. “Measure 110 must work because real people’s lives hang in the balance.”

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Trump indicted: What to know about the documents case and what’s next

Published on June 9, 2023

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Brownstone Institute

Europe’s Digital Services Act Puts Free Speech at the Mercy of Eurocrats

Published on June 9, 2023

By

From the Brownstone Institute

BY David ThunderDAVID THUNDER

The European Union’s Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, was apparently miffed that Elon Musk withdrew Twitter from the EU’s “voluntary code of practice against disinformation.” He was sufficiently put out by Twitter’s withdrawal from the “voluntary code” that he felt the need to publicly reprimand Twitter for not gratefully submitting to the European Union’s expert guidance: “You can run but you can’t hide…Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under Digital Services Act as of August 25th.”

The declared aim of the new Digital Service Act is “to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market for intermediary services by setting out harmonised rules for a safe, predictable and trusted online environment that facilitates innovation and in which fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter, including the principle of consumer protection, are effectively protected.”

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Who can argue against a “safe, predictable and trusted online environment?” Who would argue against “consumer protection?” And who would argue against Mr Breton’s commitment to the fight against “disinformation?” I certainly would, because when a person or institution in a position of great power endorses values like “predictability,” rails against “disinformation,” and promises to keep us all “safe” on the internet, you can be sure that it will be “safety,” “predictability,” and “disinformation,” as viewed from their self-serving ideological and political perspective.

I am just as worried as Mr Breton about “disinformation,” but my chief concern is with disinformation coming from official sources, which can do an extraordinary amount of harm due to the extraordinary reach and prestige of official organisations. It is these same organisations that Mr Breton would like to put in charge of policing “disinformation:” organisations like national governments, that have been among the most frequent perpetrators of false and misleading information, on matters of no small moment, from the efficacy and safety of Covid vaccines, masks and lockdowns to the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the true standing of climate “science,” and the potential harms to the economy and food supply chain of aggressive climate interventions such as the expropriation of farmland.

The Digital Services Act is an endless maze of complicated regulations worthy of a team of lawyers. Seeing as I don’t have a budget to hire a team of lawyers, I decided to skim through the Act for myself. It does not make for pleasant bedtime reading, not only because it is a morass of complicated legalese, but also, because what hides behind this legalese is an attempt by EU politicians to get social media platforms under their thumb, through

  • the obligation on the part of social media companies to periodically submit content moderation and “risk mitigation” reports to EU bureacrats
  • EU supervision of social media platforms’ policing of “harmful” information, which could potentially include health misinformation as well as “illegal hate speech”
  • the creation of new emergency powers in the European Commission to “require” social media platforms to take actions to “prevent, eliminate or limit” any use of their services that might “contribute” to a “threat” to public security or public health

…and all backed up by crippling fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s worldwide turnover for non-compliance. Yes, you heard that right: up to six percent of a company’s worldwide turnover.

At bottom, the Digital Services Act is an attempt to ramp up the level of control that EU bureacrats have over the flow of information on social media platforms. You would have to have a very short historical memory to think that broad powers of censorship will generally be used to advance the cause of truth and justice. Whether Mr Thierry Breton and his colleagues will be successful in forcing social media companies to do their bidding, this much is clear: the Digital Services Act creates a European legal environment that is increasingly hostile to free speech.

Republished from the author’s Substack

 

Author

  • David Thunder
    David Thunder

    David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society in Pamplona, Spain, and a recipient of the prestigious Ramón y Cajal research grant (2017-2021, extended through 2023), awarded by the Spanish government to support outstanding research activities. Prior to his appointment to the University of Navarra, he held several research and teaching positions in the United States, including visiting assistant professor at Bucknell and Villanova, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program. Dr Thunder earned his BA and MA in philosophy at University College Dublin, and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Notre Dame.

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