In the annals of dumb things the voters of Oregon have done to themselves, nothing tops Measure 110, which, stripped of its gasbag rhetoric, legalized hard drugs in Oregon. Take a bow: we were the first state in the union to do so.
With luck, the last.
Whoever thought up this bit of lunacy really had it figured out: pull the plug on the state’s feeble attempts to keep hard drugs (and theiir users) tamped down; then turn around and shower money on various non-profits and “clinics” to treat the growing supply of addicts.
And here’s the beauty part: the whole ediface of new clinics and clinicians would be paid for by creaming off taxes on yet another drug, marijuana, which remains illegal as far as federal law is concerned.
Brilliant.
From the get-go, the stench of progressivism rose from the corpus. As OPB, one of the biggest cheerleaders for 110, reported…
The “war on drugs” policy approach led to an increase in incarceration for nonviolent drug-related crimes, especially among people of color. Now, organizations focused on addiction recovery services for BIPOC communities in Oregon are hoping to expand their reach with money made available by Measure 110.
Couldn’t be a proper Oregon project without moving POCs to the head of the line, of course. But that line just kept getting longer. As the money flooded in—$300-million or so—someone had to figure out how to spend it. You would think that, because this is a government tax, the government would dole it out.
But—nope: this is Oregon, and so a 20 member “citizen” board, full of “lived experience” was formed to approve the various outfits that sprang up, like dandelions in May, to figure out who gets what. Not that these were garden-variety people off the street; they, themselves, came from the nether-world of addiction “services,” and organizations monetizing the state’s plentiful supply of addicts (who OD’d at rates which rose 33.6% to 1,069 in 2021, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
The members of this Council are never mentioned by name in the media’s depthless reporting…but let’s pick a few at random…
Morgan Godvin, Research Associate, Health in Justice Action Lab (a spin-off from Northeastern University in Boston, MA), where her official bio states that…
Morgan Godvin is a drug and justice policy advocate and freelance writer. She is formerly incarcerated for drug-induced homicide and now strives to see a public health approach to substance use implemented nationally.
Then there’s Amy Madrigal, MS, CADC II, CRM, listed as a “Community Advocate.” Her day-job is “crisis manager” at the Oregon Washington Health Network, which coordinates (whatever that means) actual service providers in Eastern Oregon. The Network says…
The primary long term goal of the Oregon Washington Health Network is continued sustainability. This is to be achieved through acquisition of grants and contracts and other fundraising activities.
Dharma Leria Mirza, a “Graduate Student Health Researcher, Community Health and Harm Reduction Educator, Oregon State University,” who was “spotlighted” in a Association of Recovery in Higher Education web site…
Area of Study: I am studying Public Health, Queer Studies & Medical Humanities.
Dream Job: My dream job is just doing the work of health justice and liberation for marginalized people. I especially love public speaking, oration, and queer of color critique.
Karen Wheeler, “Chief Executive Officer Greater Oregon Behavioral Health, Inc.” Its web site says…
…GOBH is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that is charged with administering the behavioral health Medicaid benefit, non-emergent medical transportation and community engagement in 12 rural and frontier counties in Oregon.
And then there‘s Blue Valentine, “Harm Reduction Service Provider.” She works for the Benton County Harm Reduction Program. That innocuous (on purpose) term muffles one of the most contentious aspects of addict-treatment. As the Benton County web site proclaims…
Harm Reduction helps people stay safe when they have sex or use drugs.
…which involves, essentially, giving addicts the gear they need to get high, low or otherwise loaded.
As Oregon Public Broadcasting said, it’s…
…the spirit of Measure 110. For example, services must be culturally competent, inclusive and low barrier. This means that programs can’t eject a patient for a single relapse, and that harm reduction services — such as overdose reversing drugs, fentanyl testing strips and clean syringes — should be available for people who are not ready to abstain from substance use.
“Harm Reduction,” is why people in certain Portland neighborhoods worry about their kids stepping on discarded syringes, to put it bluntly.
Let’s stop there, with the stipulation that the membership of the Council is—best case—self-interested. The cat jumped out of the bag back in February when the Lund Report (which follows what might be called, with amusement, Oregon’s health policy) said…
Those concerns, which have been bubbling up in recent meetings, came to a head on Feb. 9 when two members of the council threatened to quit, questioning whether the council’s process for awarding grant money allows members’ personal biases to give some organizations an unfair advantage and opens the door to funding organizations who won’t be able to use the money effectively.
What a surprise.
Without getting into deep weeds, note that the Council was so inept that the project was handed off to (as they say on TikTok, “wait for it”) the Oregon Health Authority, architects of the state’s Covid-response bungles and mandates. They also botched the job and then our Secretary of State, Shemia Fagan, got into the act and her auditors spanked the agency, noting in typically convoluted government-speak…
OHA could have provided a template for evaluation rubrics or counseled the OAC that adopting too many criteria would slow down the grant making. The OAC-adopted rubric is complex, with over 250 different elements.
Surprise #2.
But now we can all breathe easier: the Council/OHA…or whoever…is finally, doling out the contracts.As the Lund Report said…
Thursday morning, however, the Measure 110 Oversight and Accountability Council voted on the last of 236 applications representing 326 entities across the state during a subcommittee meeting. Now, Oregon Health Authority is negotiating contracts with grant winners, a process that the state estimates will take until late July or early August to complete.
Anyone taking bets they’ll hit the mark by autumn?
A couple of early winners took a bow in an OPB (them again!) podcast with two grantees…
Julia Mines is the executive director of Miracles Club, and Brittiny Raine is the co-founder and co-executive director of CORE Eugene.
CORE stands for “Community Outreach Through Radical Empowerment,” which should fit the Eugene template nicely. And, no surprise, one of its premiere programs…
Harm Reduction Distribution (HRD) is a low barrier program that creates access to harm reduction supplies as well as providing education around safer use and resource navigation in our community.
In plain English: free gear for addicts and where to go to get more government handouts.
As for Miracles Club, let’s simply note that it’s a…
…community recovery center that offers addiction peer services to the African American Community…
…with this qualifier…
Peer services support clients through connecting clients to community resources…
Note: “connecting clients.”
If you look at members of the Council and racial outfits like Miracles Club, you’ll get the queasy feeling that they’re not really in the street-level business of hands-on helping, which is messier and less successful than “coordinating.” Nope: they’re brokers of someone else’s services. Go-betweens. What, in more traditional political-machine towns, are known as “fixers.”
And now, as the circular machine—easy drugs/addiction/ services/ more drugs/ more addicts/ more services—grinds to life Oregon, already destination of choice for tweekers nationwide, becomes even more attractive.
Brace yourselves.
How have these people and advocacy groups become legitimized? Perhaps the same way that OPB/NPR/PBS remain legitimized?
I've just cut/pasted/and googled the beneficiaries names and their outfits. Yikes! doesn't quite catch the impact they made upon me. I had hopes with Brittiny Rain as it conjured a French Lieutenant's Woman vision Of Lyme Regis or Polansky's Tess, all North Atlantic afflicted stormy beauty. But, no.
By that time in my reading the moniker Blue Valentine called forth a Lynchian literalist image of Harry Lime, all fruit with mildewed fur. Val did kind of fill out that expectation
You have a high overdose rate because of prohibition. Think about it. Alcohol is legal and there are 1) millions of functional alcoholics and 2) a huge industry to treat them. Up until the fentanyl flooding in, the other drug with functional addicts were heroin. Seriously, think about this. No crack or meth functionals. So, why do you care unless you want alcohol illegal? No addiction is good, but these are personal choices. Make this stuff legal and get the killer fentanyl out of the mix. There were people dying from illegal alcohol back in prohibition days, my grandfather told me about people drinking Bay Rum cologne. The overdose deaths we are seeing today are a direct result of the prohibition.