Democratic lawmakers in Oregon on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping new bill that would undo a key part of the state’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law, a recognition that public opinion has soured on the measure amid rampant public drug use during the fentanyl crisis.
The bill would recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as a low-level misdemeanor, enabling police to confiscate them and crack down on their use on sidewalks and in parks, its authors said. It also aims to make it easier to prosecute dealers, to access addiction treatment medication, and to obtain and keep housing without facing discrimination for using that medication.
Harm reduction sites already exist in Portland and provide many of those services. The US justice department has traditionally been a block for doing more.
The drugs laws in place since the 80s have essentially made providing any type of support to a drug user in the United States a federal offense. This is why safe injection sites in New York City took decades to open and essentially opened in defiance of Federal rulings against such sites source. Corporate Counsel for the City of New York has essentially dared the Federal government to come stop them citing a public health emergency in preventing overdoses, and the U.S. Attorney (Prosecutor) for the Southern District of NY (where the sites are) promising swift enforcement (which has yet to materialize) source
