Portland’s Addiction 2 Drug Decriminalization

If ever there was an argument AGAINST drug legalization it’s in “Oregon’s drug decriminalization effort a ‘tragedy’,” as last yr state wrote 2.5K possession tickets in “open-air” mkt as overdose deaths hits all-time high.

How bad are the streets of Portland? Says The Lund Report: Sixteen months into that city’s first-in-the-nation experiment with decriminalizing drug use, a record 1069 overdose deaths occurred in 2021 or “a 41% increase from 2020.” BTW, as Fox news noted: “The new law made possessioin of those substances no more than a Class E violation, the equivalent of a traffic ticket punishable by a max $100 fine. But the fine is dismissed when someone who is fined calls a help hotline, Lines for Life, and completes a health assessment. The idea is to connect drug abusers with services an treatment instead of putting them behind bars.”

As so often with progressive “experiments” like this, the proferred cure triggers worse, not better, results. As David Murray, a senior Hudson Institute fellow who advised drug czars for two different presidential administrations: “It is predictable, was predicted and now, unfortunately, is coming to pass in front of our eyes … It is a tragedy and a self-inflicted wound” as a whopping 75% of tickets issued resulted in convictions but no shows in court, let alone phone calls to the hotline.

Davd Soul