Portland Mayor Scraps Plan to Outlaw Public Drug Use

In the wake of a bill passed by the Legislature this week recriminalizing possession of fentanyl, Wheeler says his proposed ban is no longer necessary.

TED TALKS: Mayor Ted Wheeler at Portland Street Response press conference. (Brian Burk)
By Sophie Peel

Just five days after announcing his intention to ban public drug use, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler says he’s abandoning the initiative. Even by the standards of City Hall, the plan had a brief lifespan: 11 days, after WW reported it was being considered.

Wheeler’s stated reason for the reversal: The ban is no longer necessary because the Oregon Legislature passed a bill that makes possession of fentanyl a criminal misdemeanor.

“We believe that House Bill 2645 addresses our primary concerns about the public health crisis unfolding on our streets, and it restores necessary law enforcement tools that were envisioned in my own ordinance,” Wheeler said in a Tuesday afternoon statement. “Therefore, it is no longer necessary to pass an ordinance at the local level and I will be withdrawing my proposed ordinance.”

While Wheeler did not identify it as a factor in his reversal, he acknowledged that his proposed ban would have likely been challenged in court. “I was willing to take that fight to the courts, if necessary,” he noted.

People with knowledge of the matter tell WW that critics of the proposal had warned the mayor in recent days that an ordinance banning public drug use would likely violate state law. In particular, critics pointed to Oregon Revised Statute 430.402, which prohibits local governments from creating criminal penalties for “vagrancy or other behavior that includes as one of its elements either drinking alcoholic beverages or using cannabis or controlled substances in public.”

Oregon Public Broadcasting said it had raised questions about that law with the mayor’s office last Thursday.

Meanwhile, HB 2645 aimed to close a loophole in Measure 110, the 2020 ballot initiative that decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs. At the same time as Measure 110 took effect, deadly overdoses involving fentanyl rose—as did public consumption of the opioid in downtown Portland.

WW chronicled the open-air fentanyl market that persisted at Washington Center, the vacant commercial property at Southwest 4th Avenue and Washington Street.

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