Westneat: Oregon’s cautionary tale about drugs

“It needs to happen, and it needs to happen urgently. And if it doesn’t happen, then we need to rethink the basic tenets of that ballot measure. If it’s not working, then let’s just admit it, and let’s move on to something that does.”

Strong words. I bring them up because our state now appears to be stumbling into a plan, if you can call it that, to follow Oregon. Except we’re doing it far more haphazardly, after our state lawmakers adjourned without passing any sort of treatment network.

If the special session Gov. Jay Inslee called this week to address the drug law is unsuccessful, possessing small amounts of hard drugs like meth or fentanyl will become legal here on July 1.

Oregon is right there, across the Columbia River. Legislators, please take a look at it, to see how this is likely to work out.

Two years ago, Oregon made it so having drugs was no longer a crime, but a civil violation, subject to a ticket with a $100 fine. You could get out of the fine by calling a hotline and getting evaluated for addiction. So Oregon tried to maintain some semblance of a “nudge” toward treatment.

It hasn’t worked out. Arrests dropped to zero, so the war part ended. But the healing part has been lacking.

So far, drug users have received 4,266 of the civil tickets. But fewer than 200 have called the hotline about treatment. Incredibly only 36 people in two years have followed through to get the health assessment. A recent state audit found there is so little engagement with the system that the hotline is costing $7,000 per call.

Even advocates now say it was a mistake not to get the support infrastructure up and working first.

“If I had to do it all over again, I think I would reverse the way that we’ve done it,” an Oregon state legislator told The Economist magazine.

Remind you of anyone? This is exactly the mistake Washington lawmakers are making, only here it’s worse. By punting on the issue, they’re leaving an incoherent Wild West situation where drugs may be effectively legal in some cities and towns but not others, while, most crucially, they’re leaving any statewide treatment network unfunded.

This reminds me of Seattle’s heedless flirtation with defund the police. Progressives so botched the execution of defund the police that the idea is now radioactive in politics, when it shouldn’t be. Now they seem hellbent to repeat this same mistake — of doing it backward — with drug policy.

Voters get it, too. Here in King County, they just approved a $1.25 billion levy for crisis centers. You couldn’t ask for a stronger signal that the public supports building out a healing network. It will take time, though, not to mention a plan and more money, to do anything similar statewide.

It’s too soon to dub the Oregon experiment a failure. But it is already a cautionary tale. It’s not in some distant state, it’s right next to us. Based on what’s been going on down at our state Capitol, it might as well be on the moon.