Portland finally passes fentanyl ban
Briana Oser
After four years of a mishandled drug crisis in Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler has decided to rein it in by reinstating criminal punishment for fentanyl possession. The new bill is much needed and should help to rectify Portland’s drug disaster, which was brought on by bad leadership.
In 2019, Portland officials approved the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, which decriminalized small uses of drugs under the premise that criminal punishment is not an effective or humane way to heal addiction.
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We now have evidence that this is dead wrong. Deaths from fentanyl, an addictive opioid, increased every year in Portland from 2019 to 2021, reaching 737 deaths in 2021. This number has nearly tripled since 2019.
These catastrophic data can also be attributed to Portland’s handling of homelessness.
According to a Multnomah County resource website for the homeless called “A Home for Everyone,” 37.5% of homeless people in Portland struggle with substance abuse as of 2022. That’s almost 2,000 homeless people in Portland who have drug problems.
In 2019, Portland purchased more than 22,000 tents for the homeless to keep them out of shelters because of COVID-19. In 2021, Portland legalized homeless encampments in public spaces. As statistics have shown, the effects of these decisions were more homelessness and more drug problems. So, on June 7, Portland’s city council imposed a tent ban, reversing its 2021 decision.
Now, Portland is back to square one, but the city council still has a lot of work to do. First, it must deal with a situation that has become exponentially worse because of its earlier laws. Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt told local news source KATU News, “We are constantly trying to get them into treatment and the treatment services are not available for them. They’re sitting on waitlists, they’re waiting in our jails to get into treatment beds, so this idea to go back to criminalization to get them into services — it’s still the same problem. Where are the services to connect them to?”
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Schmidt notes that there is no way Portland’s current resources can immediately solve problems of drug abuse. Now that the city has let the problem get this far, it has even fewer resources. In its laziness, Portland has let its drug problem go. Its treatment services are probably lacking along with law enforcement. But the law cannot permit drug abuse, which obviously harms the individual and often threatens the safety of the community.
Portland ought to take more compassionate and direct steps in solving homelessness and drug addiction. It should start by recognizing that the problems are intertwined. It could learn from cities such as Houston, whose policies have reduced homelessness by 63% since 2011. Most cities without drug crises have not passed laws that enable addictions. And the more the homeless population sobers up, the less drug dealing and overdosing. The cycle might finally slow down.
Briana Oser is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.