OUR VIEW: Drive for changes to Measure 110 gains speed, if not direction
Published 5:30 am Thursday, November 30, 2023
- OUR VIEW LOGO (NEW)
“Returning to the failed policies of the past only takes us down the same road that led to Measure 110 in the first place.”
— “Our View,” Rogue Valley Times, Aug.17, 2023
A little more than three months since we editorialized about the frustration and disenchantment with Oregon’s attempt to shift the focus from legal punishment to treatment, the calls to take action on Measure 110 have only gotten louder.
A dozen state legislators (11 Republicans and an independent) have prevailed upon Gov. Tina Kotek to call an emergency special session to address repealing, or at least significantly changing, the law voted into existence in 2020 with 58% of the vote — an approval rating that has more than reversed itself in recent polling.
Early in November, the state’s leading law enforcement agencies presented an 11-point proposal to deal not just with Measure 110, but the state’s worsening drug crisis, a plan the coalition said would address “the detrimental effects the crisis is having on community safety and quality of life across our state.”
The proposal from the Oregon District Attorneys Association, the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association and the Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police includes a half-dozen public safety measures, focused on changes to legal classifications on drugs, as well as treatment measures including increased capacity in sobering and wellness centers, changing land-use policies for the location of secure residential facilities, and the establishment of “quick response teams” for opioid overdose cases.
The coalition writes that while it recognizes the “significant allocation of resources” needed to implement its proposal, it bluntly states that “Measure 110 failed to recognize that drug addiction is both a public health and public safety crisis and requires solutions on both sides of the ledger.”
Jackson County’s state lawmakers, while differing on their stances regarding Measure 110, told the Rogue Valley Times recently that something is likely to come out of the five-week legislative session that begins in early February.
State Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, said that while some penalties that don’t reach the level of recriminalization of prior drug laws were possible, he opposes a complete repeal off Measure 110.
“We’re not so interested in returning to a model that didn’t work,” he said, “even if the change isn’t materializing as fas as we want.”
State Rep. Kim Wallan, R-Medford, also doesn’t support a repeal, but pointed to the ineffectiveness of the law by citing statistics from a Wall Street Journal report this month that showed only 92 of the 6,000 or so ticketed for offenses had completed the steps necessary to connect them with treatment services.
“You can’t just make a soft suggestion to an addict toward treatment,” said Republican state Rep. Christine Goodwin of Canyonville, a member of the legislative committee that received the 11-point proposal from law enforcement agencies.
“They’re not going to do it willingly,” she added, citing family experience with addiction that underscored her belief that “evidence-based treatment programs” with legal repercussions need to be part of revamping Measure 110.
Calling the state’s current drug crisis “this tsunami of fentanyl,” Democrat state Rep. Pam Marsh of Ashland, meanwhile, says the overlapping societal issues involved with addiction unlikely are to be solved by whatever steps the Legislature takes.
“If you change Measure 110,” Marsh says, “fentanyl isn’t going away.”
All of which leaves us to wonder what, if anything, can be accomplished by the Legislature in February that not only will placate the political interests in play but also make a meaningful difference going forward.