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Last week, WW learned that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is crafting a city ordinance that would outlaw the public consumption of hard drugs, including fentanyl, and he’s proposing criminal penalties. We reported his intentions June 16 at wweek.com. Oregon voters decriminalized the personal possession of small amounts of hard drugs with the passage of Measure 110 in 2020. That leaves the mayor with a narrow window for reducing public use: He’s can’t unilaterally recriminalize the possession of drugs, but he can outlaw smoking or injecting them in public. Here’s what our readers had to say:
ColdAnteater344, via Reddit: “Still waiting on the abolitionists to do anything but complain that doing anything to help people or protect our neighborhoods is evil. I think a lot of people are done waiting.
“I have a brother who’s been on the streets robbing people, doing drugs in public—broke into a guy’s house with a shotgun. He did a couple of years for that and was more of a human in jail and off meth but now just lives on the street, shoplifts and mugs people. The government has been giving him a pass for a decade. He refuses all treatment. I have no doubt he’s going to kill someone. Making public drug use illegal might be the only thing that saves his life and whoever is in his way. I’m all for alternatives, but it can’t be an alternative we don’t have or nothing.”
Bruce Poinsette, via Twitter: “ALL his solutions seem to lean on criminalizing people. To put it another way, everything is either a path to increase the police budget and/or fill empty jail beds. It’s a fundamentally destructive way to run a society, and we’re watching the effects in real time.”
sfab, via wweek.com: “This problem is not unique to Oregon, and 35 states have higher rates of deaths from drug overdoses than Oregon. However, Oregon has one of the lowest rates of availability for drug treatment. Oregon will not have much success in dealing with this problem until they put many more resources into prevention, treatment and enforcement. With enforcement focused on keeping the supply from coming into the state and finding and arresting the manufacturers and sellers.
“There is no magic bullet that will solve this problem that is the No. 1 killer of people between the ages of 18 and 49 in this country. Countries that have legalized some use of illegal drugs have had some success at reducing the use and deaths, but they also increased their prevention and treatment efforts. Addiction is a disease, and making any disease a crime is no cure.”
everyday abolitionist, via Twitter: “Wheeler is on a carceral rampage.”
slom68, via Reddit: “I’d also like them to start enforcing missing or stolen license plates.”
Zbignew, via wweek.com: “Seems like more work for an absent/understaffed police force. Which of the limited calls they are responding to now will drop off the priority list to make these arrests? And even if they do make the arrest, will [Multnomah County] DA [Mike] Schmidt indict or will the revolving door just go into high gear? And let’s say Schmidt actually indicts; the understaffed public defenders office can’t handle the load they have now. How many cases will be dropped because they didn’t get their day in court in a timely manner? And finally, if this gets through the whole fucked-up system, do we have the beds in the jail to actually incarcerate them?”
Baconpanthegathering, via Reddit: “But can I still hide in the bushes and smoke weed on my lunch break?”
LETTERS to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: P.O. Box 10770, Portland, OR 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com