SALEM, Arch. – Oregon’s first drug decriminalization in the nation has occurred a bumpy startbut Foreign Minister Shemia Fagan, releasing an assessment of the program on Thursday, said it was too early to call it a failure.
The decriminalization of amounts of drugs for personal use, approved by voters in 2020 under Vote 110, was intended to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in marijuana tax revenue to drug treatment and harm reduction programs. But that hasn’t translated into an improved healthcare system for a state with the second highest rate of addiction in the US and 50th for access to treatment.
“When Oregon residents passed Measure 110, we expected that our loved ones battling addiction would have access to treatment and a chance for a better life,” Fagan told reporters in a Zoom press conference. “We expected fewer of our neighbors to fight in the streets.”
Instead, funding has been slow to come out of the gate and cases of drug abuse and overdose deaths have increased.
Other states that might consider going Oregon’s route — including some countries including Portugal have taken – will probably judge how well or badly it went. However, Portugal’s approach is more forceful than Oregon’s when it comes to getting people in for treatment. There, “warning commissions” urge anyone caught using drugs to seek treatment.
When asked at the press conference what grade he would give Oregon’s program so far, auditor Ian Green said “maybe a C.” Test director Kip Memmott gave it a D and Fagan said she would award an incomplete.
The director of the Oregon Health Authority, which helps define the drug treatment aspects of the measure, attributed the funding delays to “ambitious implementation timelines and stretched OHA human resources due to the pandemic,” as well as a shift in decision-making roles affecting the build new required relationships.
“I recognize that the success of Measure 110 depends on Oregon’s ability to solve many larger challenges in the behavioral health system, such as: B. the need to expand treatment capacity and provide better support to consultants and other staff,” said OHA Director James Schroeder, who was appointed this month by newly-elected Gov. Tina Kotek.
Schroeder said Kotek has made improving Oregon’s behavioral health system and implementing Measure 110 a top priority.
The audit’s recommendations include: the health authority should release a plan by September to integrate Measure 110 into the state’s general behavioral health system; improve data collection so that the effectiveness of the voting action can be tracked by policy makers and the public; and set clear expectations, roles and responsibilities.
Another setback of the measure is the lack of people with substance abuse disorders seeking help after being convicted of drug possession and given a hotline number.
In the first year after the new approach went into effect in February 2021, only 1% of those who received subpoena subpoenas sought help through the new hotline.
Keith Humphreys, addiction researcher and professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, said the exam “is commendably candid in acknowledging the bureaucratic errors that lead to inadequate and uncoordinated services and the proposed reforms to remedy this situation.” , are reasonable.”
“In contrast, the report does not adequately address the fact that the nationwide effort to use drug possession tickets/fines to encourage people to seek treatment has been a complete failure,” said Humphreys, a former senior adviser at the National Office of the White House Drug Control Policy, said in an email.
Oregon officials are wrong to assume that increasing access to treatment alone will result in most addicts seeking drug treatment, he said.
“Without outside pressure, most people will not seek to reduce their drug use through treatment or other means,” Humphreys said.
The Drug Policy Alliance, which led the Oregon voting measure, purposely sought an approach that doesn’t force people to seek treatment, saying there are more successful outcomes when people voluntarily access services.
Fagan, whose brother and late mother had drug addiction problems, said the old system of criminalizing drug possession combined with a lack of available treatment just didn’t work.
“I was one of the strong majority of Oregon voters who voted for Measure 110 because the status quo has failed my family and people I love,” Fagan said. She described how, about four years ago, she and another brother tried to find a place to take her sibling after he agreed to seek treatment.
“My other brother and I called everywhere and we couldn’t find an inpatient facility to take him in even though he really had hit rock bottom,” Fagan said, adding that her brother is now undergoing treatment successfully.
“Make no mistake, this is a matter of life and death,” Fagan said. “Measure 110 has to work because real people’s lives are at stake.”
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