Daily Archives: June 18, 2021

For 50 years, the so-called war on drugs, which President Richard Nixon declared on June 17, 1971, has ravaged entire communities, exacerbated racial inequality, and helped propel the United States to the highest incarceration rate in the world. It is a war that, by any measure, has been lost. Abusive and discriminatory policing tactics, long prison terms, and the myriad collateral consequences of criminal convictions have destroyed lives, while doing nothing to curb addiction or the epidemic of overdose fatalities.

These destructive policies of criminalization are also unpopular.

A new national poll from Data for Progress and The Lab, a policy vertical of The Appeal, found that more than seven in ten voters (71 percent) believe that federal drug policies are not working and that there is a need for reform. Voters no longer want to treat public health issues like drug use and addiction as matters of crime and law enforcementthey support decriminalizing both drug possession (59 percent support) and the distribution of drugs in small quantities (55 percent support), while also shifting regulatory power over drugs from the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Department of Health & Human Services (60 percent support).

Many of these reforms are part of the Drug Policy Reform Act (DPRA), announced yesterday by Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and Cori Bush (D-MO). The DPRA would eliminate incarceration as a penalty for possession of any drug, expunge possession convictions retroactively, invest in alternative harm reduction programming, and place drug classification power within DHS.

The DPRA also creates incentives for state and local jurisdictions to decriminalize drug possession and invest in alternatives to incarceration, reflecting momentum toward decriminalization already in full swing at the state and local level. In November 2020, Oregon passed a measure decriminalizing low-level drug possession across the board and four other statesArizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakotavoted to decriminalize marijuana, joining 11 other states and Washington, DC. At the local level, prosecutors in counties like Philadelphia and Austin have policies to dismiss a significant number of possession-related charges.

The DPRA builds upon the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act that would decriminalize marijuana and that the House passed in December 2020, though the Senate has yet to vote on it.

Full Polling Results

We also found that a variety of arguments in support of reforming federal drug policy resonate with voters, including that the war on drugs has led to ineffective, discriminatory policies and counterproductive outcomes:

Polling Methodology

From May 21 to 23, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,250 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

Poll: Abandon The War On Drugs And Decriminalize

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Poll: Abandon The War On Drugs And Decriminalize - The Appeal

Fifty years ago this month, on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a full scale attack on drug use. It was the beginning of the War on Drugs.

Nixon and many presidents since promised the War on Drugs would save lives. Trillions of dollars later, incarceration and preventable overdose deaths have skyrocketed and continue to rise.

After generations of broken lives, broken families, and broken dreams, we must end it now.

Nixons War on Drugs turned out to be a war on people. Once he saw there was no political benefit in drug treatment, he declared an all-out war on the drug menace with a federal Drug Enforcement Agency and stiffer penalties. This helped Nixon target his political enemies.

As White House advisor John Erlichman explained, By getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Erlichman asked. Of course we did.

Nixons tough on crime stance did not save his presidency, but his War on Drugs and its disproportionate impacts on Americas poorest communities continued. Leaders from Ronald Reagan to BIll Clinton and Joe Biden, when he was still a tough-on-crime senator from Delaware, have spent billions on this failed policy, knowing all it buys them is short-term political gain.

The DEAs budget is $3.1 billion today, with many billions more spent on incarceration and military drug enforcement. Yet 2020 was the worst year in history for overdose deaths.

President Biden now tells us he wants to break from the failed policies of the past to improve the lives of regular people. He calls for green jobs and infrastructure, and expanded access to health care. Will he also, finally, call for an end to the War on Drugs, and invest in public health measures to save lives?

There is hope. In February, Bidens Office on National Drug Control Policy announced top priorities including enhancing evidence-based harm reduction efforts and confronting racial equity issues related to drug policy.

This is a historic break from the punish first drug policies that have caused so much heartbreak. It came after Peoples Action, a national grassroots network, led more than 200 drug and health-focused groups to call for an end to the War on Drugs in favor of evidence-based solutions rooted in racial and economic justice and compassion.

But words are not enough. President Biden needs to follow through on his campaign promises to decriminalize drug use and offer treatment to drug users. He should throw his full weight behind the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act, so health care providers can prescribe treatments for addiction.

But President Bidens approach to drug policy thus far has been one step forward, two steps back. He says he supports the best solutions, but retreats when he fears a political cost like when he extended the blanket scheduling of fentanyl, which increases overdose deaths and imposes harsh penalties on users.

Does Biden have the courage it will take to truly end the War on Drugs?

Local communities arent waiting for an answer.

Vermont just became the first state to decriminalize small amounts of buprenorphine, a prescription drug that eases addiction. New York State just said it will no longer punish those who carry clean syringes. And in Portsmouth, Ohio, community members defeated their police departments bid to buy a $256,000 armored tank, so that money can go towards saving lives.

But we need leadership from the top. President Biden, its time, once and for all, to end the War on Drugs and invest in the best public health strategies that will save lives. Its up to you.

Ellen Glover is the campaign director for Drug Policy, Harm Reduction, and Criminal Justice for Peoples Action, a national network of grassroots groups with more than a million members.

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50 years later, end the war on drugs | Columns | stardem.com - The Star Democrat

The 300-page recreational cannabis bill is poised to become law with one stroke of Governor Ned Lamonts pen.

HARTFORD, Conn. It was Groundhog Day at the state capitol, but the third time was the charm. On Thursday, the state senate voted to legalize recreational cannabis, yet again. The bill now heads to the Governors desk.

The delays were perhaps, fitting. Thursday marks 50 years to the day since President Nixon declared a war on drugs. Now, Connecticut is closer than ever to making this landmark legislation the law of the land.

The vote was 16-11. "We're Going to have a product that is legal for adults, taxed and regulated," said State Sen. Marty Looney.

The 300-page recreational cannabis bill is poised to become law with one stroke of Governor Ned Lamonts pen. He has indicated he will sign the legislation. "As soon as I can so nobody can change their mind."

Debate on the senate floor lasted only about two hours this time. Republicans went down in defeat. The Democrat backed legislation, they say, puts money before public health and safety and is a reason to pause at the ballot box. "Its just apparent that the Democrats are going to impose this policy because its what they want. The question for Connecticut really is, is it what families think its good for their kids?" remarked State Sen. Kevin Kelly.

But Democrats hail the bill as victory for social equity. Half of all the licenses will be awarded to applicants in local communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. "We made sure in this bill to try to make sure local entrepreneurs have a role in this new enterprise," said Looney.

The bill funnels 25% of the tax revenue to substance abuse prevention and caps THC levels at 30% across all products. "People drank alcohol before prohibition, during prohibition and after prohibition. When people want to use a product, they will find a way to use it whether it is legal or not," added Sen. Looney.

But Sen. Kelly responded, "The Connecticut Medical Society and Hospitals are saying dont do this. We followed the science all through the pandemic, but all of a sudden, were not going to follow the science. We are going to expose our kids to the availability and accessibility of marijuana, which is a drug."

Once the Governor signs the bill, you can possess up to 1.5 ounces of pot legally starting July 1st, but retail sales will take a lot longer. They are expected to begin in May of 2022 at the earliest.

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On anniversary of the war on drugs, CT sends recreational cannabis bill to Gov's desk - FOX 61

After fifteen years of soaring murder rates, corruption inpublic institutions, and human rights violations, the War on Drugs represents an ignominious defeat for the Mexican State. Most importantly, while drug trafficking organizations continue to threaten the country's national security, decisionmakers and researchers still have more questions than certainties on how to tackle this conundrum.

One of the central dilemmas that arose in the early stages of the conflict, was which instruments to use in countering the increasingly powerful drug trafficking organizations. Most police institutions were under the control of 32different governors and more than 1,800 municipalities. Furthermore, the national security force, the Federal Police, had only 6,500 officers for a country of over 100 million people. On the other hand, the government had the military, a centralized and traditional institution with over 200,000 soldiers.

At the crossroads of the early 2000s, the incentives favored a military approach to the drug cartel challenge. Nevertheless, as the levels of violence increased and human rights violations became widespread, domestic and international voices started to oppose the military's involvement in the conflict fiercely. Subsequent governments answered the criticism with attempts atpolice reformwhich had mediocre results. Faced with intense violence and overwhelmed police forces, governments opted to continue using the military as their primary tool to counter the cartels.

The creation of the National Guard (Guardia Nacional) in 2019, under President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (AMLO), was an attempt to fill the security gap between the police and the military. The idea was to create a hybrid security force capable of countering new threats, but also protecting human rights and conducting criminal intelligence.Paradoxically, two years after its creation, the Armed Forces continue to perform the central role in Mexico's internal security and severalanalysts argue that the creation of the new force has deepened the militaristic approach.

So, has the National Guard effectively decreased the militarization like Lpez Obrador first envisioned? Or, on the contrary, it has worsened an already dysfunctional strategy? With mixed results and many accusations, the National Guard is an ambivalent force in Mexican security.

By the time President Enrique Pea Nieto, took office in 2012, the War on Drugs strategy had submerged the country in the highest levels of violence it had seen since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The rapid escalation led to several cases that appalled the Mexican public. For instance, in 2011, Los Zetas Cartel sprayed one of Monterrey's largest casinos with gasoline and set it on fire, killing fifty-two innocent people. Moreover, many of the abuses against civilians came from government forces, like the 2011 killing of two studentsby the police in Ayotzinapa. In this context of social exhaustion, Pea Nieto promised a renewed approach to the security crisis based on crime prevention, human rights protection, and the creation of a gendarmerie. However, the new force never really found its place in internal security, taking peripheral roles like tourist safety. Simultaneously, the Army and the Navy continued to cement their power as the central actors in Mexican security. By 2016, the Armed Forces had a presence in twenty-fourstates, more than seventy-fiveof the federation, and the Government had created new security institutions under military command, like the military and naval police.

During the 2018 presidential campaign, the leftist candidate Lpez Obrador promised a drastic shift in Mexico's security approach under the slogan "Abrazos, no balazos" (Hugs, not bullets). After he won the election, he proposed his National Peace and Security Plan. The initiative included many soft power solutions but some hard power ones, primarily, creating a National Guard. This meant a militarized security force of at least 50,000 members enlisted from the Armed Forces, Federal Police, and new recruits. Most importantly, the aim was to displace the military of their role in internal security and move away from the war paradigm and shift towards a peacekeeping one.

The National Guard became operational in June 2019, with the mission of protecting the life, integrity, security, property, and rights of citizens, as well as preserving their freedoms. With its creation, the new force absorbed the existing national civilian security forces and the military security forces. By the end of 2020, its agents numbered almost 100,000 in 32 states and with100 barracks.Seventy percentof their members comefrom the Armed Forces.

Institutionally, the National Guard is commanded by an Army General but under the civilian authority of the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSP). Still, the military plays an essential role in supporting the Guards operations and strategy. After decades of militarization, it is no surprise that military commanders have an important voice in the security strategy. However, this ambivalence creates tensions that the Government should address.

Despite the relatively successful creation of the National Guard, the vicissitudes and dynamics of international politics made its implementation much more complicated. In particular, President Trump's pressures for stronger border control in Mexico have significantly impacted the plans for this new intermediate force. As soon as Lpez Obrador took office, Trump threatened via Twitter to imposea five percenttariff onall Mexican goods if border action was not taken. This unexpected move hindered the Government's initial plan of using the Guard as the central instrument to deal with the cartels.

As soon as the National Guard became operational, Lpez Obrador had to deploy 21,000 agents to the northern and southern national borders. The objective was to crack down on the immigration flows going from Central America into the U.S. Even though 2018 marked the highest number of murders since the start of the War on Drugs, Lpez Obrador had to balance Mexico'ssecurity needs with other domestic pressures. Considering that the U.S. buys forty-seven percentof Mexico's total exports, the imposition of tariffs would have had a devastating effect on its productive sector. This new mission limited the capacity of the National Guard to take a leading role in dealing with drug-related violence. Lpez Obrador responded by signing an executive order that allowedthe Armed Forces to continue to perform internal security missions for five more years and to the disappointment of many, the country's demilitarization became less likely in the short term.

But, how do we evaluate what we have seen from the National Guard with a realistic approach? Considering the complexity of the Mexican security crisis, a definitive conclusion about its impact, only two years after its creation, would be incautious. However, an analysis of the available data and trends can help us understand the current situation.

When looking at the major 2020 security statistics, the results are mildly encouraging. Last December, Lpez Obrador announced that the homicide rate for that year had stabilized at 27 per 100,000 with a 0.4% interannual decrease after three years of setting new highs. Additionally, kidnapping and urban insecurity perception also fell. Nonetheless, this is still not enough to jump to conclusions, especially considering that the pandemic affected criminal enterprises across the region. As the Guard continues to operate over the coming years, more data will be generated, facilitating the conditions for analysis.

From an institutional perspective, the results are ambiguous. It is easy to accuse this policy as militaristic when comparing it with the unrealistic campaign promise of "hugs, not bullets." However, it is different if we contextualize it in Mexico's security crisis and the recent experiences with police reform. The creation of a strong and capable National Guard, accompanied by a comprehensive set of social and judicial policies, appears to be the only realistic alternative to using the Armed Forces. Even countries with much lower levels of violence, like Chile with the Carabineros and Argentina with the Gendarmera Nacional, had to resort to similar hybrid forces to address Latin Americas growing security gap.

The National Guard implementation is encountering challenges that should be pointed out by critics and solved by the Government. For instance, 90% of its members have not completed the evaluations necessary to act as security agents in compliance with the National Public Safety Law. Also, the securitization of migration is a big obstacle for the Guard if it wants to take acentral role against Mexico's real threats. Most importantly, Lpez Obrador'srecent statements that they could become a fourth branch of the Armed Forces is contradictory with initial plans for the National Guard andcould definitely end all hopes for a demilitarization process.

Undoubtedly, one organization will not solve a decades-long of security debacle, but based on the domestic and regional experience, its creation was a significant step in the right direction. Mexican decisionmakers should make all the efforts to initiate the force's transition to a completely civilian institution. Simultaneously, the militaryshould progressively retreatfrom policing missions and replace them with security forces. If this happens, the National Guard will likely become a central instrument in the country's pacification. If not, it will end up as a dependentof the Armed Forces with a negligible impact.

Santiago Prevideis a political scientist from Buenos Aires studying at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Hehas previously worked in Argentinas public sector.

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Why Mexico Needs to Demilitarize the "War on Drugs" - The National Interest

Mike Marshall is the co-founder and director of Oregon Recovers. He says he's concerned the state is failing to expand addiction treatment capacity in a strategic way. "So we put the cart before the horse," he says. Eric Westervelt/NPR hide caption

Mike Marshall is the co-founder and director of Oregon Recovers. He says he's concerned the state is failing to expand addiction treatment capacity in a strategic way. "So we put the cart before the horse," he says.

Last fall Oregon voters decriminalized possession of small amounts of almost all hard drugs, taking a groundbreaking step away from the arrest, charge and jail model for possession that's been a centerpiece of American drug policy since President Richard Nixon declared his War on Drugs 50 years ago this week.

Oregonians overwhelmingly passed Measure 110 that makes possession of small amounts of cocaine, heroin, LSD and methamphetamine, among other drugs, punishable by a civil citation akin to a parking ticket and a $100 fine. That fee can get waived if you get a health screening from a recovery hotline.

The measure, a major victory for advocates pushing for systemic change in U.S. drug policy, expands funding and access to addiction treatment services using tax revenue from the state's pot industry as well as from expected savings from a reduction in arrests and incarceration.

For years Oregon has ranked near the top of states with the highest rates of drug and alcohol addiction and near the very bottom nationally in access to recovery services. And while critics everywhere have long called the drug war a racist, inhumane fiasco that fails to deliver justice or health, Oregon is the first to take a leap toward radically changing those systems.

"What we've been doing for the last number of decades has completely failed," says Mike Schmidt, district attorney for Oregon's most populated county, Multnomah, which includes Portland. Schmidt, who publicly supported Measure 110, says he firmly believes the health model not criminalization is the best way to battle the disease substance use disorder.

"Criminalization keeps people in the shadows. It keeps people from seeking out help, from telling their doctors, from telling their family members that they have a problem," Schmidt says.

Moving to emphasize health care over incarceration, supporters hope, will also start to remove the stigmatizing obstacles that often follow, including difficulty landing jobs, housing and student loans, and getting a professional license in a variety of fields.

Tera Hurst, executive director of the Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance, says the state's decriminalization marks bold systemic change. "We can't nibble around the edges on this," she says. Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance hide caption

"The War on Drugs has been primarily really waged on communities of color. People's lives have been destroyed," says Tera Hurst, executive director of the Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance, which campaigned last year to pass decriminalization and is now pushing to see it's fully funded and implemented. "We can't nibble around the edges on this. It's really important to me that we smash the stigma on addiction and drug use. And this helps get us closer to that."

But five months since decriminalization went into effect, the voter-mandated experiment is running into the hard realities of implementation. Realizing the measure's promise has sharply divided the recovery community, alienated some in law enforcement and left big questions about whether the Legislature will fully fund the measure's promised expansion of care.

Even many recovery leaders here who support ending the criminalization of addiction are deeply concerned the state basically jumped off the decriminalization cliff toward a fractured, dysfunctional and underfunded treatment system that's not at all ready to handle an influx of more people seeking treatment.

Advocates for decriminalization "don't understand the health care side, and they don't understand recovery," says Mike Marshall, co-founder and director of the group Oregon Recovers.

"Our big problem is our health care system doesn't want it, is not prepared for it, doesn't have the resources for it and honestly doesn't have the leadership to begin to incorporate that [expanded treatment]," says Marshall, who is in long-term recovery himself.

"My drug of choice from beginning to end was alcohol," he says, "but the last 10 years was dominated by crystal meth."

Oregon supporters of decriminalization point to Portugal as a reform model. In 2001, Portugal dramatically changed its approach and decriminalized all drugs. The nation began treating addiction as a public health crisis. There, anyone caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug gets mandatory medical treatment.

But Marshall and others point out that Portugal took more than two years to transition carefully to a new system and replace judges, jails and lawyers with doctors, social workers and addiction specialists.

"So we put the cart before the horse," he says.

In fact, Marshall and others worry the treatment and harm reduction horse isn't even on its feet in Oregon, which is leaving too many stuck in a dangerous pre-treatment limbo and at potential risk of overdosing.

"There were no resources and no mechanisms in [Measure] 110 to actually prepare the health care system to receive those folks," Marshall says.

"Most places that have successfully done decriminalization have already worked on a robust and comprehensive treatment system," says Dr. Reginald Richardson, director of the state Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission. "Unfortunately, here in Oregon, we don't have that. What we have is decriminalization, which is a step in the right direction."

There's also shockingly little state data to determine what programs work best or to track treatment outcomes and share best practices. There's also no agreed upon set of metrics or benchmarks to judge treatment efficacy, both in Oregon and nationally.

And the pandemic struck and decimated a treatment system that was already struggling, experts here say. Because of social distancing and other pandemic protocols, Oregon, like many states, had to reduce the number of treatment beds and services. That's left the system reeling just as decriminalization programs try to take flight.

"We've got significant trouble in terms of workforce, having the right people, qualified people and enough people to provide services to folks who struggle with addiction," Richardson tells NPR. "And we've got underfunding by about a third to treatment providers."

Indeed, even some closely involved with implementing the new measure are privately voicing growing concerns. "I really hope we don't spend the next 10 to 12 months with open air drug markets and nowhere to send" those seeking help, said one official who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Complicating implementation is that Oregon can't get matching federal Medicaid money, a key funding source for states, to expand treatment under Measure 110 because it's using tax revenue from the legal sale of marijuana, which the federal government still classifies as a Schedule 1 illegal drug.

Today, anyone across Oregon caught by police with small amounts of hard drugs is issued a civil citation like a traffic ticket not a criminal charge. So if you're found holding, among other drugs, up to 2 grams of methamphetamine or cocaine, 40 hits of LSD or oxycodone, up to a gram of heroin, you get a citation and a $100 fine. That fine goes away if you agree to get a health screening through an addiction recovery hotline, an assessment that might lead to counseling or treatment.

Measure 110 did allocate millions in new treatment funding money funneled from the state's marijuana tax along with expected savings from reductions in arrests and incarceration.

But Marshall and others are alarmed that it did not require those funds be spent in a strategic way to expand capacity for a system that has too few detox beds, not enough residential or outpatient treatment and recovery chairs, not enough sober housing and too few harm reduction programs.

These are all services that will be desperately needed, Marshall says, as more people get pushed out of the criminal justice system and into the health system.

Mike Schmidt, district attorney for Multnomah County, Ore., strongly supports the decriminalization shift underway. "What we've been doing for the last number of decades has completely failed," he says. Eric Westervelt/NPR hide caption

"Many times the only way to get access to recovery services is by being arrested or interacting with the criminal justice system. Measure 110 took away that pathway," he says.

"I know that it takes an intervention for many of us to be saved" from addiction, says Jim O'Rourke, a Portland lawyer who opposed Measure 110 and who is also in long-term recovery.

Arrest, he says, can give people the push they need to finally get help.

"The threat of having to go through a judicial process gave them the external motivation they needed to do something that their internal motivation wasn't strong enough to get done," O'Rourke says. Addiction is a disease "that takes over the brain, it takes over your executive function." A citation and a potential fine, he believes, "just isn't strong enough."

Opponents say that's especially true since there's basically no consequence if anyone now cited for possession simply ignores the ticket.

"If word on the street is it's only 100 bucks and you don't go to jail, boom, chances are they're going to toss it," says Pam Pearce, founder of Oregon's first high school dedicated to youth recovery. She is also in long-term recovery.

"If it's like a parking ticket, what is the person's motivation [to get help]?" asks Pearce, who's now executive director of Community Living Above, an Oregon substance abuse prevention organization. "We're talking heroin, meth, cocaine and acid it's not child's play."

But decriminalization advocates counter that jail pathway to potential treatment was so flawed, biased and ineffectual for so long it had to be taken away.

The percentage of arrestees who successfully followed through on addiction treatment was low. And on average a huge percentage of those convicted of drug possession in the state were rearrested within three years.

"When you look at recidivism rates," says Schmidt, the Multnomah district attorney, "70% and 80% were getting rearrested. That's a complete and utter failure."

A key selling point to Oregon voters was that decriminalization would significantly reduce or even eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in convictions and arrests. Blacks make up just over 2% of Oregon's population. But as in the rest of the country, they've experienced far higher arrest rates for drug possession here than whites. Oregon Blacks are 2.5 times as likely to be convicted of a possession felony as whites, who make up 76% of the population.

The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission estimates that Measure 110 will reduce those disparities and result, overall, in about 4,000 fewer Oregonians a year getting convicted of felony or misdemeanor possession of illegal drugs.

Julia Mines is executive director of the Miracles Club, the state's only place targeting the African American recovering community. At most treatment centers, she says, "When we come in, there's nobody that looks like us." Julia Mines hide caption

Julia Mines is executive director of the Miracles Club along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in northeast Portland. It's the state's only place targeting the African American recovering community.

"At the beginning of this, I wasn't for it," Mines says. "It took me to go to prison to get my, you know, get on the right track."

Mines had gone far off-track because of a cocaine addiction. She lost jobs, friends and two children one to foster care and one to adoption.

"Because I chose crack over my children," she says.

Mines eventually went to prison for selling the drug, though she now chuckles at the "major dealer" moniker she was given in court following a police sting that caught her selling less than 1,000 feet from a school.

"Like they really put a big dope dealer off the street!" she says with a laugh. "I wasn't no dope dealer; I was a user, come on now!"

Mines says she changed her mind on Measure 110 when she realized it might mean a chance to end the criminalization of addiction that continues to ravage people in her community. She's now on one of the measure's implementation committees.

"I made my voice loud and clear: I'm here representing the African American community, and that if we're going to implement this, that we need to have resources for the people that are just getting those citations," she says.

Mines says she hopes new resources eventually help her turn Miracles, now mostly a place to hold recovery meetings, into Portland's first full-scale treatment facility tailored to people of color.

"When we go to treatment centers, when we come in, there's nobody that looks like us," Mines says, "and nobody's willing to take a look at our culture and try to understand the historical and generational trauma."

This month her program took a step in that direction. The Miracles Club was among 48 groups statewide that shared $10 million under the first wave of Measure 110 funding. Mines says she'll now be able to hire three new peer mentors as well as additional support staff.

"But this funding is only for six months. So what's coming down the line after this?" she asks. "You know, that's the question mark right now, actually, a big question mark."

Mines says she has yet to see anyone come in to one of Miracles' thrice daily recovery meetings because of a possession citation and health screening under the new decriminalization policy.

That sluggish start is mirrored statewide. So far Measure 110's new 24/7 addiction recovery help line where people who get a possession citation can call is mostly quiet. Nearly five months in, just 29 people who've been issued a possession citation by police have called the line for an addiction health screening, according to Dwight Holton, CEO of Lines for Life, the Oregon nonprofit that runs what's formally called the Telephone Behavioral Health Resource Network.

"I'm excited about helping Oregon law enforcement see this tool as a bridge to recovery," Holton says. "That's what it needs to be."

A proposal in the Legislature would address some of Measure 110's implementation challenges and sharpen rules and oversight. But that, too, has stoked controversy. Among other things, the bill proposes doing away with that $100 fine for possession, arguing that the fee would adversely affect low-income folks with a substance use disorder. The bill would also change the addiction health assessment for those caught with hard drugs into what critics call a less rigorous screening.

Meanwhile, many Oregon police leaders, while mostly staying out of the public fray as implementation debates roil, are privately worried.

"They're frustrated, they're annoyed, they're concerned," says Jim Ferraris, immediate past president of the Oregon Association Chiefs of Police. He spent more than four decades in Oregon policing.

The state's Criminal Justice Commission records show about 9,000 people were arrested each year in Oregon for simple drug possession before Measure 110. Despite the drop in arrests, Ferraris says, "People are still committing crimes to get money, to buy dope, to support their habit. So how is this [decriminalization] going to impact that cycle?"

Jim Ferraris is the immediate past president of the Oregon Association Chiefs of Police. "We're going to see more and more people needing help because drugs are going to be more readily available and there's no one keeping it in check," he says. Jim Ferraris hide caption

Efforts to stop large-scale trafficking in Oregon continue as usual. Local and multiagency and regional drug interdiction task forces say their work goes on apace.

"Measure 110 has not affected our work at all," says a regional spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Oregon Legislature in 2017 had already made possession of small amounts of hard drugs here a misdemeanor, not a felony. But some say full decriminalization has had a demoralizing effect on that work.

"We're already hearing of people coming into Oregon to use because they know they can do drugs and sleep outside and police can't do anything about it," says a frustrated central Oregon officer who asked not be named because of his work in drug interdiction.

Preliminary state numbers show that opioid overdoses were up sharply in 2020, though officials say that likely has more to do with the deadly pandemic's social, emotional and financial impact than decriminalization.

Still, the experiment here has launched with the pandemic's shadow still very much hanging over the recovery community. Several organizations contacted by NPR said the number of people relapsing, anecdotally anyway, has skyrocketed.

In fact, some groups say they're having trouble finding enough peer counselors because so many are back using.

"The relapse numbers have gone up so much," says Eli Staas with the 4th Dimension Recovery Center in Portland. "For a lot of people the [pandemic's] isolation especially is what took them back out" of sobriety.

Now with decriminalization, one law enforcement official who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly predicts within a year Oregon "will be inundated with (more) folks who have substance use disorder."

A key person to help lead Oregon through this rocky transition is 36-year-old old Tony Vezina, who founded 4th Dimension in Portland, the state's first youth-oriented recovery program. He's also the new chair of Oregon's Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission, which is tasked with improving treatment services.

"Been in and out of jail since I was, ya know, about 14 years old," Vezina says. "My roots are in trailer parks of Pocatello, Idaho. A history of crime and trauma and poverty on both sides of my family. Ya know, and I was a product of all that."

Now more than nine years sober from what he calls a crippling meth and heroin addiction, Vezina says as commission chair he's committed to having tough conversations across a treatment community that remains divided over the best way to implement Oregon's bold, voter-mandated experiment.

Tony Vezina, executive director of 4th Dimension Recovery Center and chair of the Oregon Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission, is nine years sober. "Now we need to rapidly design a new system strategically," he says. "But Oregon doesn't operate strategically around this issue." Eric Westervelt/NPR hide caption

"We haven't built anything new, so now we need to rapidly design a new system strategically. But Oregon doesn't operate strategically around this issue. So we don't have a new intervention system. We don't have a recovery-oriented system of care," Vezina says. "We've just decriminalized."

"We all need to work together to make sure that people get the intervention and the support they need to change their lives because it's really hard for people," he says, adding, "It's really hard for me."

Some police, however, are predicting darker days ahead.

"We're going to see more and more people needing help because drugs are going to be more readily available and there's no one keeping it in check," says Ferraris, recently retired as police chief in Woodburn, Ore. "Overdoses will go up, crime will go up and cartel drug dealing will continue to flourish up and down the I-5 corridor."

But supporters of decriminalization say that is largely last-gasp fearmongering by unreconstructed drug warriors who won't accept that the interdict, arrest and jail model has failed.

"We all need to be along for a long-term systems change," says Hurst of the Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance. She and other advocates say it's far too early to make any judgments about Oregon's experiment. The metrics to watch over the coming years, she says, is how well Measure 110 expands access to detox and treatment services statewide.

"There are so many centers across our state that don't just need investments, they've been starved," she says.

Still, those involved helping that system change take flight are keenly aware the nation will be carefully watching what Hurst hopes will become a model for other states looking to stop arresting and charging people with a substance use disorder.

"This could make or break kind of the movement on some level if Oregon wasn't able to pull it together. But I don't think that will happen," Hurst says. "I hope other states take notice, and they watch. And we're going to learn a lot."

"Maybe there would have been a better way to glide path this [Measure 110] on," prosecutor Schmidt says of implementation. But the Multnomah County district attorney says a jolt was needed. Merely tinkering with drug and addiction policy wasn't working.

"Sometimes you just need to stop the way you're doing it," Schmidt says, "to put some urgency behind fixing the systems that need to come into place."

Go here to see the original:

Oregon's Pioneering Drug Decriminalization Experiment Is Now Facing The Hard Test - NPR

WASHINGTON Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, today questioned witnesses at a Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security hearing on Undoing the Damage of the War on Drugs: A Renewed Call for Sentencing Reform.

In his remarks, Congressman Cohen noted what he called the true reason for the War on Drugs revealed by former Nixon Administration senior domestic adviser John Ehrlichman in a 1994 article in Harpers Magazine.

Mr. Ehrlichman said, You want to know what this is really about? The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the anti-war Left and Black people. You understand what Im saying? We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or Black but, by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Congressman Cohen said that that the War on Drugs since the 1930s has been a campaign against Black and Brown Americans: racist, racist, racist, and always has been and still is.

Congressman Cohen, the Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, noted that he introduced a Constitutional amendment in January to reform the pardon power so that, as he put it, it is about mercy and justice and not taking care of cronies and covering up crimes. He said it should be used to commute non-violent drug offense sentences.

See the entire exchange here.

Witnesses at todays hearing were:

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Congressman Cohen Questions Expert Witnesses at a Hearing on Sentencing Reform - Congressman Steve Cohen