To send a message to residents and state lawmakers amid a spiraling drug crisis and rampant homelessness, the city council in Portland, Oregon voted unanimously Wednesday to approve an emergency ordinance banning the use of hard drugs in public.
The emergency ordinance amends the city code that already prohibits the open consumption of alcohol and marijuana in places like public parks and on sidewalks to also include hard drugs like heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamines.
But the vote was mostly symbolic because of Measure 110, the ballot initiative approved by voters in 2020 that decriminalized user amounts of street drugs, like heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamines, and that forbids local governments from regulating their use. State lawmakers would have to change the law for Portland to act on its ordinance.
Mayor Ted Wheeler had floated a similar crackdown on public use of hard drugs over the summer, but temporarily backed down. At the start of Wednesday afternoon’s meeting, he said he hoped the council’s actions would “inspire” state lawmakers to take the drug crisis seriously.
“The last time I saw someone consuming what I believe to be fentanyl publicly on our streets was less than five minutes ago, three blocks from city hall,” he said. “This is a significant issue.”
Commissioner Rene Gonzalez, who has expressed a desire to send a message to the nation that Portland is working to improve public safety in the city, said Tuesday that the emergency ordinance was intended to send a message to Portland residents.
“We’ve heard you. You’re exhausted with open-air drug use, and you’re demanding action,” he said. “The decriminalization of hard drugs was never supposed to mean open use, acquiescence to violence, to crime. It was never supposed to be no available ambulances for those suffering a heart attack or stroke. Yet, every day in the city of Portland we face that risk.”
In addition to passing the emergency ordinance, the council also unanimously passed a resolution calling for city staffers to work with state and local partners to develop plans to regulate public drug consumption and to develop drug-treatment resources.
Wednesday’s vote comes after a poll last month found that a clear majority of voters support repealing Measure 110 in full or repealing portions of the law to allow for the restoration of penalties for drug possession. The poll backed up reporting by National Review published in August about the declining support for the fledgling drug decriminalization effort in Oregon.
Measure 110, or the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, was passed with 58.5 percent of the statewide vote in 2020. Proponents, led by the George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, spent millions of dollars promoting the initiative.
Advocates promised a new, progressive approach to addressing drug addiction, saying that people with substance-abuse disorders “need adequate access to recovery services, peer support and stable housing.” And, advocates said, drug addicts need treatment “through a humane, cost-effective, health approach,” not to be treated like criminals.
Once passed, user amounts of hard street drugs were decriminalized, and “harm reduction” efforts — helping addicts to use drugs more safely — were prioritized. People caught with small amounts of drugs started receiving citations, like a parking ticket, and a $100 fine, which can be dismissed if the offender calls a treatment referral hotline and completes an assessment. Money from the state’s marijuana tax was going to be redirected to recovery services.
But more than two years later, critics say the money for recovery services was dispensed slowly. During that period, with the rise in fentanyl abuse, drug-overdose deaths have skyrocketed and squalid homeless camps have proliferated. Only about 1 percent of people ticketed for drug possession have called the new hotline for help, an audit found.
Most of the people who spoke during Wednesday’s council meeting supported the effort to crackdown on public drug use, though some expressed concerns about pushing drug addiction into the shadows or shifting back to treating drug use as a criminal versus public health issue.
“This prohibition specifically targets substance abuse users without sufficient private property to use legally,” Lauren Armony, program director of a social service nonprofit, told councilmembers, according to the Oregonian. “It will marginalize substance users into unregulated and unsafe environments.”
Gonzalez, on the other hand, said the emergency ordinance and the resolution passed on Wednesday are “necessary, common-sense steps to disrupt debilitating drugs us on the streets of Portland that does damage to our city’s livability, overwhelms our emergency response system, and destroys lives.”