Counting the cost of decriminalising drugs in Oregon
Christian Haserot has tried to get clean a handful of times.
But during his most recent attempt, the once aspiring cyber security researcher encountered an insurmountable obstacle.
Everywhere he turned in Portland, he saw people smoking fentanyl.
Even when hunkered down in his sheltered housing bedroom, the fumes would waft up to his window.
“The temptation of having people outside my building, standing in a group smoking in plain sight.. it was too hard for me”, he says, dejected. “I relapsed.”
Three-years-ago Oregon became the first US state in history to decriminalise hard drugs after 58 per cent of voters backed the lenient legislation.
Measure 110 was meant to transform the “war on drugs”, with addicts given treatment and support instead of incarceration.
Tax income from cannabis sales were meant to fund drug treatment programmes.
But with few users seeking help and others flocking to the state in light of its relaxed laws, the state’s biggest city has transformed into a “zombie apocalypse” of drug addicts getting high in broad daylight.
Within 30 seconds of setting off on a patrol of the downtown area with Portland police Sergeant Jerry Cioeta, we see someone keeled over on the cold pavement, their arms wrapped around a red pole.
“This person is really high on fentanyl. That’s why they’re licking a telephone pole”, he says.
Pointing to a group of five men in hats, he adds: “These guys were dealing, that’s why they’re running away from me.”
Around them is a smattering of tents, a shopping trolley and a number of sleeping bags strewn in front of what used to be a hotel.
A significant number of local businesses are boarded up, with those that remain hiring private security to keep watch.
Before Measure 110 came into effect, Portland was “just like any other normal place”, said Mr Haserot, 29.
Dressed in a burgundy puffer jacket and clutching a woolen Oregon hat to protect from the cold, he adds: “Maybe there were some alcoholics out and about, but you didn’t see people holding foils in public and hitting stuff on foil.
“You didn’t see meth pipes out on the street. That was not around. And now it’s, you know, it’s everywhere.”
He says he also meets a “lot of people who moved here because of the drug laws”.
Under Measure 110, anyone caught with small amounts of hard drugs like fentanyl, heroin or meth is given a $100 ticket.
But, if they call a 24-hour hotline to complete an addiction screening within 45 days, the fine disappears. There is no penalty for failing to pay.
“We’ve written over 700 tickets since May, and to the best of our knowledge not a single one has called up and gone to treatment”, Sgt Cieota says. “Two out of two people don’t want help.”
Sgt Cioeta has been an officer in Portland for more than 26 years. When he started out he would respond to alcoholics or domestic violence, now more than 90 per cent of his job is taken up by open air fentanyl use and dealing.
Sgt Cioeta and a team of four other officers are tasked with tackling drug use on the streets, what he describes as a game of “whack-a-mole”.
Around another corner, a drug user is sitting between two carefully manicured city flower pots. He is desperately trying to scrape fentanyl residue out of a metal tin.
Behind him, around a metre a way, a man high on the synthetic opioid has passed out - the only thing keeping him upright is the pressure of his forehead leaning against a red, brick wall.
“Can you smell that?” Sgt Cioeta says. “It kind of smells like weed, but it isn’t, that’s fentanyl.”
Sgt Cioeta said things have become so bad because of a “perfect storm”: the pandemic, Measure 110 and the prevalence of fentanyl.
“It’s a drug like we have never seen on this planet. It’s highly addictive, that withdrawal is sudden, and is super cheap”, he says.
Areas of the city have been “decimated” by fentanyl use, where they’ve transformed “from vibrant to zombie land”.
“One time we had four fatal overdoses in three minutes within five feet of each other.”
Accidental drug overdose death rates in the state doubled from 472 in 2020 to 955 in 2022.
While residents had been in favour of Measure 110 initially, in a survey of 1,000 locals by Emerson College earlier this year [2023], 56 per cent said they wanted it repealed.
But for some, the drug laws are not relaxed enough.
User Quentin Sweet, who has just received a ticket for smoking fentanyl at a tram stop, said he thinks the only place people shouldn’t be able to smoke the drug is a nursery.
“Drugs are not bad for someone, but instead are enjoyable, and even so far as to say a healthy experience that is good for someone”, he says.
Mr Sweet, 23, who has painted his fingernails, and the skin around them, red, says he has no intention of paying the fine or calling the number on the back of the ticket.
“I’ve completely dismissed it as unimportant,” he says.
Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences who has studied the impact of Measure 110, says decriminalisation has been a “complete failure”.
“They’ve let drugs run the state”, he says.
Mr Humphreys said before the introduction of Measure 110, Oregon’s drug laws were already some of the most lenient in the country.
The complete overhaul “represented a misunderstanding of the nature of being addicted to fentanyl,” he says.
“Because drugs feel good in the short term, even though in the long term they’re wrecking your life, people are much more ambivalent about seeking treatment.
“You can’t throw away all those sticks and just hand out carrots. If you want people to access addiction treatment, there has to be some press from the other side. Otherwise they’ll just continue using drugs until they die.”
