One thumb up for Measure 110
Is there anybody left who actually thinks that Ballot Measure 110, which essentially legalized possession of hard street drugs in Oregon, was a good idea? Well, yes, apparently there's at least one person. Her name is Tera Hurst, and the Weed wheeled her out to stick up for 110 today, here.
Who is this person? The Weed says she's the "executive director of the Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance, an organization that advocates for implementation of" Measure 110. As far as I can find, no such organization is registered with the Oregon Secretary of State. There's a Twitter account, here. A Google search reveals that Hurst has run unsuccessfully for the Portland City Council, and headed up something called Renew Oregon, but her real claim to fame is that she was "chief of staff" (dear God, the pretension) for one of city's worst-ever mayors, Char-Lie Hales.
Regardless of her credentials or lack thereof, Hurst's argument is weak. She says that if 110 is repealed, the county will lose drug treatment money from marijuana taxes. It ain't necessarily so. The law that repeals 110 could simply say that the treatment money keeps going where it is going now.
But we have to re-criminalize hard drugs, with good diversion programs to back up the criminal law. The vast, vast majority of addicted people are not going into treatment voluntarily. They need a big push.
If you continue to make hard drugs legal, half the addicts in the country will continue to flock to Oregon, to defecate and die on Portland streets. Measure 110 was an epic fail. Anyone who thinks otherwise, including Hurst, is delusional.
So, enough complaining. DO SOMETHING! I downloaded a copy of the text of M 110, and it would not be hard to revise it to recriminalize possession, and provide for civil diversion remedy of treatment, if the arrestee attends treatment. Then, signature gatehring is in order. OR, take the proposed changes to the legislature, and spend a day or two banging on legislators (remember the "Gang of 90"?) Get going. Now.
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DeleteMeasure 110 has worked perfectly as far as its advocates are concerned. They were the ones arguing that addicts shouldn't be imprisoned. Well, they got their way. Prosecutions for drug possession fell dramatically. As of last year (or was it 2021?) some of the measure's proponents were still urging patience to the public impatient for Oregon's new Portuguese-style streets-to-rehab program to begin accepting new patients. Today's reality is called "harm reduction," which means it's a crime against the autonomy of people whose lives revolve around feeding their drug habit to expect them to stop using and go into detox and rehab before they're good and ready to do so. And when will that be? Well, not before an army of harm-reduction missionaries have catered to addicts' every need - including clean needles and the testing of suspect drugs - by meeting them on the filthy sidewalks where they live. Nothing gives those badass missionaries a greater sense of purpose than when they resurrect an addict who has overdosed by giving them the miracle drug Narcan, which reverses the effects of heroin and its lethal cousins. It's better than helping birth a baby. An infant still has a clean moral slate, whereas the Narcan missionary is saving someone whose lack of regard for themselves and others would otherwise have made them pop their clogs.
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