Drug Decriminalization: Surrendering to Addiction or Destigmatizing Recovery?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
A recent piece in the New York Times (Lean Left bias) highlighting the impact of Oregon’s decision to decriminalize hard drugs in 2020 sparked commentary on the policy's effectiveness in combating drug addiction.
“Catastrophe”: Bret Stephens (Lean Right bias) argued drug decriminalization in Oregon has been a “catastrophe.” Citing data showing rising overdoses and crime in the state, Stephens refuted decriminalization supporters, stating, “addicts are not merely sick people trying to get well, like cancer sufferers in need of chemotherapy. They are people who often will do just about anything to get high, however irrational, self-destructive or, in some cases, criminal their behavior becomes.”
Inadequate Funding: A writer in Jacobin (Left bias) pushed back on Stephens’ arguments, determining the data cited lacks national context, writing, “Oregon’s decriminalization happened to come amid a horrific rise in overdose deaths across the nation, driven by the spread of fentanyl and the COVID-19 pandemic.” The writer argued that “woefully inadequate” funding for the recovery programs established alongside decriminalization policies is the true reason for the current issues.
The Portugal Model: Supporters of decriminalization often cite Portugal, which decriminalized personal use of all drugs in 2001, as an example of decriminalization working. However, Newsweek (Center bias) quoted Mike Marshall, executive director of the advocacy group Oregon Recovers, contrasting Portugal’s approach to Oregon’s, stating that Portugal “spent two years distributing funds and building an alternative pathway that included consequences and repercussions... then they started decriminalizing drugs after they had built out that system.”
Featured Coverage of this Story
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Drug Decriminalization Policies Work — With Properly Funded Treatment Services
One of the biggest winners of the 2020 elections, across red and blue states alike, was drug decriminalization. With even many conservatives getting on board with decriminalization, it seemed as though the “war on drugs” might soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. The most sweeping of the 2020 initiatives was Oregon’s Measure 110, which decriminalized personal possession of all drugs. The leading precedent for the ambitious law was Portugal’s similar policy passed twenty years earlier.
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Drug decriminalization, for just a moment last month, appeared to have been making itself at home in the American Northwest—raising questions once again as to what the country might look like were it to permit possession.
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How soon is too soon to call a progressive and libertarian policy obsession a public policy fiasco? In the case of Oregon’s Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, better known as Measure 110, the moment can’t come soon enough.
In 2020, Oregon voters approved, with 58 percent in favor, a measure to decriminalize possession of small amounts of hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine and establish a drug-treatment program funded by tax revenue from marijuana sales. Those caught with less than a gram of heroin or less than...
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