What's Really Going on with Oregon's Drug Decriminalization?

Researchers studying drug decriminalization in Oregon put out their first preliminary results. Plus, my theory on fentanyl addiction.

Drug decriminalization in Oregon—known as Measure 110—has so far been a game of who’s quickest to the draw. As in, who can be the loudest and quickest to call the whole thing a doomed failure. News outlets can then report: “Many people see Measure 110 as a contributor to the state's drug addiction problem, and some argue it should be repealed.”

This post is really an addendum to a recent newsletter I wrote analyzing the criticisms of Measure 110. Reading that last post will provide helfpful context for this one.

Briefly: the recent burst of decrim naysayers came after a batch of data put out by the state of Oregon showed many people who are recieving citations for drug possession are neither following up for evaluations nor are they accessing treatment. Measure 110, the critics say, isn’t working and is failing to deliver its promise to the voters who overwhelmingly supported it.

As I and many others have said in response, the health care, treatment and harm reduction programs are only just now got their funding from the state. A major structural overhaul like this takes a lot of time, and so judging it as a failure before it’s even started is silly. Of course there’s been no major changes yet. A whole new way of doing things has to be stood up. In particular, the citation to evaluation to treatment pipeline has not been built yet. And that’s the thing the critics are—rather cynically— harping on.

Thankfully, there is some new preliminary research into what’s really going on in Oregon. This study adds some much needed data, analysis, and clarity into the mix. Has Measure 110 really brought on the apocalypse? Has de-emphasizing drug policing created a tidal wave of crime and disorder? So far, the answer, empirically, is no. What this study does show is that people’s perceptions of crime and disorder are often untethered from material reality.

It’s vibes, man.

For this post, I interviewed RTI researcher Hope Smiley-McDonald, PhD, a senior sociologist and RTI’s director of the Investigative Sciences research program. Smiley-McDonald, along with numerous of her other colleagues, conducted this first of its kind study looking into drug decrim in Oregon. Smiley-McDonald is part of a team that will be closely tracking the implementation and outcomes of Measure 110 over the next four years.

Smiley-McDonald told me:

“Communities across the U.S. are grappling with many difficult challenges related to COVID-19, poverty, inflation, decreases in affordable housing, and rapidly changing drug markets. Any one of these factors can influence opinions about the causes of crime. In this case, Measure 110 is being blamed for perceptions of increased crime in Oregon.”

Before diving into the meat of their findings, I thought it would be helpful to up-top lay out their methods and what they measured, so that you, dear reader, can understand how they arrived at their conclusions. To be sure, this study is limited in scope and has not yet been peer-reviewed. But it does provide a unique glimpse into the implentation of drug decrim and its impact on public safety and how people percieve crime and disorder post-Measure 110.

There’s two main prongs to the analysis, blending quantitative data (911 calls) and qualitative data (34 interviews, which is actually a lot for qualitative data):

• First, the researchers examined “calls for service data,” which are publicly available 911 calls. They compared Portland’s 911 calls to Boise, Sacramento, and Seattle between January 2018 and June 2022 , before and after Measure 110’s implementation. Why 911 calls? They “provide a unique view into a community’s concerns and needs as they show how much police are being called by the public to respond to particular types of incidents.” Why these cities? The researchers wrote they are “reasonable comparisons to Portland in terms of size, demographic composition, and region.” (Boise is obviously the smallest).

• Second, the researchers conducted 34 hour-long interviews with representatives from law enforcement (officers and leadership), emergency medical services/fire, district attorney offices, community corrections, juvenile justice, and the treatment and harm reduction communities. They asked all these people from various sectors about their perceptions of how Measure 110 has impacted law enforcement in their communities and agencies. 

First—for all the data and quant nerds out there, I see you—let’s walk through the 911 calls in Portland and compare those to the other three cities in the analysis. Figure 1 below tracks all 911 calls for Portland, Sacramento, Seattle, and Boise, clearly marking when Measure 110 was enacted.

via RTI International

Per the chart above: “Overall, Portland is shown to follow similar trends as its comparison cities, with no increases in people calling 911 after Measure 110 was enacted.” The researchers note that the fluctuations line up with the seasons, generally increasing in summer months and decreasing in winter months. (Portland is the dark line, and it precisely mirrors neighboring Seattle, which has not decriminalized drugs).

Figure 2 below specifically looks at “disorder calls” for things like vagrancy, unwanted persons, and other disturbances. (NOTE: Does not include Boise because there was no publicly available data category for these crimes.) Once again, there has been no increase in the public calling 911 for disorder crimes in Portland following Measure 110. The researchers note, “In fact, Portland’s trend line generally follows the pattern of Seattle and Sacramento.”

Note that Sacramento, which has fewer people than Portland, has a higher call volume for disorder calls. Another note: Tana has written extensively about Sacramento’s conservative DA, Anne Marie Schubert, whose “tough on crime” stance seemingly shields her from presiding over very high crime rates.

Via RTI International

The third and final chart (I promise) shows 911 calls for property crimes before and after Measure 110 was enacted. Below, it does look like in the summer of 2021, after Measure 110 was enacted, that Portland saw a spike in property crime. But then it falls very sharply and lines up with previous years.

Property crime in Portland and beyond has been in the news a lot lately, portrayed as a symptom of social decay that’s often blamed on criminal-justice reform. But Portland’s crime trend once again doesn’t seem unique or anomalous, and it also cannot be traced back to solely to Measure 110. In the summer of 2021, crime was rising all over the U.S., in places trying to implement reforms and in places that didn’t.

Via RTI International

Here is what the researchers wrote about Portland having higher property crime calls:

“Coinciding with civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd, Portland’s slight increase in property crime calls persisted into the late Fall of 2021. Property crime calls then dropped precipitously in the Winter of 2022 and has since flattened. Notably, the number of property crime calls in July 2022 (our last data point) was essentially the same as those reported in July 2018, 2019, and 2020, prior to Measure 110.”

Portland does appear to have a high number of calls for property crimes, and as Smiley-McDonald told me, there’s likely numerous reasons for that (COVID-19, poverty, inflation, housing, etc.). Blaming property crime on drug decrim doesn’t really hold water.

“What we see in the public-initiated calls for service 911 data in Portland is that Portland is no different from other cities in other states with respect to what law enforcement are being asked to resolve,” Smiley-McDonald told me.

Vibes, Man…

Let’s take a look at the results from the qualitative interviews, which are a fairly good gauge of people’s attitudes and perceptions in the midst of drug decriminalization. So far, the only qualitative data I’ve seen has been in the news from people who seem eager to argue for their own agendas. These interviews were conducted over the summer of 2022.

According to the study, interviews from those working in law enforcement centered around two main themes:

1. Crimes in general— with property-related crimes and disorderly offenses, in particular—had increased following Measure 110’s implementation.

2. Public opinion in Oregon has soured on Measure 110 because Oregonians feel like they are witnessing and being victimized more by crimes as a result of the ballot measure.

Many of those working in law enforcement, from beat cops to leadership and district attorneys, blamed crime and disorder on Measure 110. Smiley-McDonald told me that many of the respondents wanted to see before and after data on crime. So that’s what the researchers did, and the 911 calls simply doesn’t support law enforcement’s negative perceptions of drug decrim. But the news sure does!

“Sometimes perception is not reality when it comes to public policy and specifically drug decriminalization,” Smiley-McDonald said in a press release. “This appears to be one of those cases. Since the treatment and harm reduction services were just funded in August 2022, more time is needed to see if the intended benefits of Measure 110 — which is to support people who have substance use disorder with health services — will be realized.”

The researchers also interviewed people who work outside of law enforcement. These folks mostly said that cities across the country have seen upticks in crime, not just Portland. And the reasons behind the bad vibes according to them are manifold. In cities like Portland, suffering and poverty have simply become more visible over the years. Homelessness appears to be spreading. And in this atmosphere, it makes sense people do not feel safe.

I think there is another variable staring us all in the face. Ever since illicitly made fentanyl began to take over heroin markets, it seems that things— in general—have gotten worse. Smiley-McDonald notes that the rapidly changing and highly volatile street drug supply could surely be in the mix as a variable contributing to bad vibes.

This is my bias, but I think fentanyl addiction is qualitatively worse than say, an oxycodone or heroin addiction. I think it’s a particularly insidious drug to be sold on the street. We all know it is causing mortality to skyrocket. But what about the people who are living day to day using fentanyl and these ungodly analogues? I need more time to think and parse this out, but the fact that the drug supply has been changing this whole time that people are panicking over crime, disorder, bad vibes, etc. seems to not be a coincidence.

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I hope this write-up of an actual empirical study looking into drug decriminalization in Oregon was helpful. There’s been a million takes and articles out there based on very little. You’ve got psychologists like Keith Humphreys blaming West Coast libertarianism. You’ve got cops and right-wing DAs saying the sky is falling. You’ve got everyone saying: See! Nobody is opting-in for treatment and Measure 110 is failing. It’s pretty exhausting to sift through all this, so that’s why an actual research paper is so useful.

To end this, here is some final takeaways from study:

• “Our preliminary findings show that there is no discernible change in the public’s use of the 911 system following Measure 110’s rollout in Portland.”

• “The Portland data tracks very closely to its comparison cities in nearby states for property, disorderly, and vice offenses and demonstrates similar seasonal fluctuations.”

• “Importantly, the CFS data do not support the negative perceptions of Measure 110 that were expressed by the criminal-legal system representatives we interviewed in Oregon.”

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