WILD, WILD WEST NOW SAD, SAD WEST

“This past week, Portland, Oregon, was in the news again. And some of us suspected that it would be. Sooner or later.

“For when a state legalizes (or ‘decriminalizes’) hard drugs, you don’t have to be a clairvoyant to see into its future.

“Recently the media has been filled with pictures out of Oregon. And not just Fox News. Even a few members of the foreign press published photo packages of Portland featuring people sprawled out on the streets, needles sticking out of their arms, in what one official there calls an ‘open air drug market.’ Reporters witnessed open drug use with police officers leaning against squad cars nearby.

“Sixteen months ago, Oregon became the first state in the country to allow ‘personal-use’ amounts of heroin, meth, LSD and other hard drugs … .” — this column, June 18, 2022

And now the voters in Oregon might have buyer’s remorse.

An outfit called DHM Research surveyed 500 Oregon residents recently, and found that 63% of them “support reinstating criminal punishments for drug possession while continuing to fund treatment programs,” according to Fox News.

“Oregon is the only state in the nation where possession of personaluse amounts of hard drugs, including heroin, meth and fentanyl, is decriminalized, after 58% of voters passed Measure 110 in 2020.”

Imagine that: having regrets about decriminalizing fentanyl and heroin and meth. Who would’ve thunk? Except perhaps everybody outside certain brainstorming sessions in Oregon.

It only took a couple of years. Now two-thirds of Oregon’s citizenry have had enough.

Fox reports: “Overdose deaths increased 4.58% in Oregon from November 2021 to November 2022, according to preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase was more than seven times the national average.”

All it takes is a few minutes online and a Google search for “Oregon drugs” to see the squalor on the streets there.

“I don’t think Oregonians want to restart the drug war,” one person told the network. “I think we didn’t realize that what we were signing up for was the deterioration of civilized norms and the public spaces being ceded to people in late-stage drug addiction and engaged in all sorts of criminal activity to keep that addiction going.”

This isn’t a told-you-so moment, or shouldn’t be. People are dying by the scores. The AP reported that eight people died of drug overdoses in Portland over a recent weekend. Six of the deaths were linked to fentanyl, currently the No. 1 killer of younger Americans. It often comes disguised as cocaine or as a prescription drug. The AP also reports that the number of homeless deaths linked to that drug has jumped eightfold in recent years.

There are other states that are moving toward legalizing hard drugs, including even those so-called magic mushrooms. We have a hard time believing that more people on the streets, seeing things and yelling at ghosts, would help the crime problem — or even their own problems. But people are pushing the idea. Emphasis on pushing.

Let us look at other states that have taken some of these steps, such as Oregon. And use them as an example.

To beware.