The hit comedy series Portlandia that ran from 2011 to 2019 revolved around the idea that Portland, Oregon, was a haven for kids who grew up in the 1990s but who never really matured to adulthood. The show poked fun at the pretentious hipster scene in the west coast city, targeting feminist bookstores and naked bike-riders for mockery. The show even opened with a song including the lyric, “The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland.”
Someone’s dream came alive in Portland, but it has turned into a nightmare for city residents. The ultra-progressive government has turned a blind eye to continued blight and criminal activity, and has refused to clean up the human waste and tent cities erected on downtown streets by the homeless and mentally ill.
As in many states, uber-blue Portland had outsized sway in state government, and the legislature was convinced by activists in 2020 to decriminalize illicit drugs. So, if your dream was to hitchhike to the coast to find a nirvana where you could snort cocaine and use marijuana in the open without fear, Portland was your destination.
But not anymore. The misjudgment behind this “soft on drugs” approach has become apparent as Oregon’s city’s turn into wastelands of drug addicted people, and as of September 1, illicit drugs are illegal statewide once again.
Specifically, possessing small amounts of hard drugs is now a criminal offense again, instead of a mere citation and a $100 fine under the 2020 rollback. Now, the same small quantities can land a person with a misdemeanor charge and a six-month chill-out in prison.
The new law passed the statehouse in March, and puts hard drugs back on the list of criminal offenses. Those who sell drugs in public parks will also face stiffer punishment. Those who supported the 2020 law argued that prison “didn’t work” to stop drug abuse, and somehow, they convinced lawmakers that simply doing nothing would, somehow, work. Neither did money for addiction treatment. The 2020 law directed a lot of the state’s new tax revenues from newly legalized marijuana toward addiction treatment, but it failed.
Staff tasked to audit the state’s efforts said Oregon did not have the wherewithal to mount new and comprehensive addiction treatment services. The fentanyl crisis—fentanyl overdoses are the top cause of drug deaths in the U.S.—also overwhelmed allegedly good intentions.
