There’s a price to be paid for bad policies divorced from human nature.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that Oregon’s first-in-the-nation law to decriminalize hard drugs is finally facing serious backlash. This may come as a surprise, but according to AP, the state has seen an “explosion of public drug use fueled by the proliferation of fentanyl and a surge in deaths from opioids, including those of children.”
Who could have seen that coming?
Measure 110, passed by the Oregon state Legislature in 2020, decriminalized several hard drugs. It also set up a fund with taxes from cannabis sales, to invest in “recovery.”
What Oregon residents got was a whole lot of drugs with no recovery in sight.
The penalties for hard drug use are now so light as to be nearly worthless.
For instance, citizens caught with under a gram of heroin are subject to a ticket and a maximum fine of $100. That’s barely more than the cost of ...
