"Maybe, possibly, potentially we might have been wrong"

The Oregonian editorial board, who told us all to vote for drug decriminalization in Measure 110 in the fall of '20, is now having second thoughts. They ran an editorial on the subject the other day. It's not quite as wishy-washy as the "audit" report issued by the "vote" tattoo lady, but at best it's on the strong side of wishy.

The way the paper is spinning it now, Measure 110 can still work if a lot of things happen: The legislature rewrites it, we find a billion or so lying around for new facilities, people suddenly want to work with dangerous drug zombies, somebody in Portland dares to force a junkie in a tent to do something they don't want to do... in short, things that are never going to happen. If my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle.

I was laughing this editorial off, like so much coming from the milquetoast O suits, but then I came across one passage that rubbed me pretty hard the wrong way:

Certainly, the mistakes written into the measure leave a lot for the state to clean up. As audit manager Ian Green noted, hindsight shows that decriminalizing drug possession before treatment services were broadly available was not the right move. 

Spare me the "hindsight" bit, Grandma. Everybody with at least half a brain warned that putting the legalization cart before the treatment horse was going be a disaster. And that includes the ex-governor, John Kitzhaber, whom they used to call a public health genius. As blue as blue can be, even he wasn't liberal enough, or dumb enough, to buy into Measure 110.

Legislators and Kotek’s administration should recognize they have limited time to put the program on the right path. Because while it might be too soon to call it a failure now, that window is rapidly closing.

Wow, pass the pablum. It can still be turned around. Sure. And I might fork over good money to get past the Oregonian paywall someday.