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Voters in Oregon approved a historic ballot initiative that would decriminalize possession of smaller amounts of all illegal drugs and funnel tax revenue from legal marijuana sales into addiction treatment, potentially providing an early model for combating deep racial disparities in the criminal legal system and significantly slowing the war on drugs.
Now that Measure 110 has passed with nearly 59 percent of the vote, racial disparities in drug arrests are expected to drop by an astounding 94 percent, according to an analysis by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, a state agency. Drug convictions against Black and Native people are expected to drop by 95 percent. In Oregon (and many other parts of the country), Black and Native people are targeted by police and arrested for possessing drugs at much higher rates than whites, despite similar rates of drug use among people of various backgrounds.
As activists have long pointed out, drug prohibition makes communities of color targets for arrest and incarceration. The drug war served as a backdrop to the police-perpetrated killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among countless others. After Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, another office participating in the arrest turned to shocked onlookers and said, “Don’t do drugs, guys.” Police would later suggest that drug use contributed to Floyd’s death, even though it was the violent arrest that clearly killed him.
In Louisville, a botched no-knock drug raid resulted in the murder of Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician shot by police in her own apartment. The killings of Floyd, Taylor and other Black people targeted by police sparked widespread protests demanding racial justice and the defunding of police. For racial justice activists, ending drug criminalization is one critical component of preventing police violence and reducing incarceration.
Additionally, New Jersey, Arizona, Montana and South Dakota legalized marijuana for recreational use, joining the 11 states that have already voted to legalize the most popular drug in the United States that remains illegal under federal law.
Supporters of Oregon’s Measure 110 say it would also increase access to drug treatment in a state where federal data suggest people living with addiction face significant barriers to accessing treatment. Nationally, drug reformers and public health experts worry that aggressive policing is exacerbating the opioid overdose epidemic while millions of people in need are unable to access effective, evidence-based addiction treatments. As advocates point out, drug arrests reinforce stigma around drug use and fear of law enforcement prevents people from accessing addiction treatment […]
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