by James E. Gierach

Drug decriminalization failed in Oregon, prompting Gov. Tina Kotek to sign HB 4002 re-criminalizing drugs. Oregon’s drug policy reform failure disappointed many hopeful people.

In my opinion, the reform failed because drug decriminalization failed to address many obvious drug-prohibition crises that prompted the experiment. Conceptually, legislators tried to use decriminalization Measure 110 to shift drug possession, use and sale from the criminal side of the ledger to the health-based side of the ledger. It was hoped that incentivizing treatment and greasing the skids leading to rehabilitation with drug-decriminalization legislation would reduce overdose deaths and drug use. It did neither.

Neither the criminalization nor decriminalization of drugs can dissuade people from experimenting with drugs, using drugs, or quitting drug use. People have always used intoxicating and mind-altering substances, and they always will. It’s part of human nature, unchangeable by legislative act or governor’s signature.

What legislative and executive branch government can do, but has not done, is regulate the manufacture, production, inspection, distribution and sale of mind-altering substances. Drug-labeling, licensing of drug-premises and drug-potency limits can immediately prevent accidental overdose and death. Immediately, with government regaining control over the annual, $500 billion illegal drug trade, fentanyl deaths and overdose cases would plummet. Immediately, drugs stamped with “government inspected” labels would enlist the help of those persons best positioned to prevent drug overdose—drug users. Immediately, in a legalized drug but public, drug-consumption-regulated environment, that obnoxious behavior would significantly reduce.

Oregon’s drug decriminalization law failed to do any of those things.

Before decriminalization, Oregon offered drug users no place to buy legal, regulated, labeled, government-inspected drugs. After decriminalization, the same. The same black-market sources that supplied drugs before the decriminalization experiment continued to supply them after Measure 110 reform.

Repetitive news of drug overdose, public intoxication, petty theft, shootings, gangs, guns, new drugs and precursors, fentanyl, and vagrant immigrants fleeing other drug-prohibition countries and its consequential conditions of violence and corruption—all these realities catch the eye of Americans and Oregonians. These very visible crises—the product and inevitable side effects of drug prohibition intolerance and policies—cannot be solved by enactment of weak-kneed, half-measured drug decriminalization in Oregon, or anywhere else.

On the good side, yes, drug decriminalization can prevent further expansive of the prison-industrial complex in American and Oregon. However, drug users and drug sellers comprise a very unsympathetic segment of our society, and incarceration and its effect on families and communities passes largely unnoticed by most Americans and Oregonians.

In contrast, the counterintuitive, unpopular answer to all these crises is the legalization of all commonly used drugs. Change the economics of the $500 billion a year, global drug economy. Change it in Oregon. Change it in America. Change it globally. Reform drug policy as America once reformed alcohol policy to stop violence, corruption and unnecessarily dangerous prohibited alcohol sold by the likes of Al Capone and his gang.

Addiction and substance abuse will not disappear with drug legalization, but both are more manageable out of the closet. More importantly, full-strength drug legalization can dramatically resolve Oregonian, American and international collateral drug prohibition crises.

James E. Gierach is a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney, former director and speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an international nonprofit organization, and author of “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs?” (Gaudium, 2023.)

Yeah imagine a scenario where he starts tossing shit at you or kills you on the spot for making him draw 25 fuckin cards.

Gotta love how I drew the beer bottles though--

Adam Yauch at UNODC exhibit, May 2009, ok I liked that the camera started w this top of head close up 😄

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/adam-yauch-at-the-welcome-to-gulu-exhibition-and-benefit-news-footage/87136250

Human Trafficking Facts

1. The US has nearly four times more gun violence than any other developed country in the world The US had 29.7 homicides by firearm per 1 million people. The country with the second highest rate was Switzerland with 7.7 homicides by firearm per 1 million people. 2. Americans make up less than 5% of the global population...But own 42% of the world's privately held firearms.

3. States with more guns have more gun deaths

4.  Mass shootings get the most attention, but suicides comprise a majority of gun deaths At 63%, suicides comprise the largest category of gun deaths. Mass shootings only account for 1.5% of all gun deaths.