Law enforcement agents announced that the streets of Portland are packed with homeless addicts openly buying and selling drugs and that signs of drug addiction are increasing statewide, Fox News reported.
Pictures reveal the desperate situation in the liberal Pacific Northwest city, where people can be seen shooting up drugs or passed out in broad daylight.
The dreadful scene comes 16 months after Ballot Measure 110, which passed with 58.8 percent support- decriminalized hard drugs in the Democrat-run state.
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Oregon was the first state in the United States to decriminalize possession of personal-use amounts of Heroin, Methamphetamine, LSD, Oxycodone, and different drugs after voters approved a ballot measure in 2020 to decriminalize hard drugs.
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A person found with personal amounts of Heroin, Cocaine, Methamphetamine, and different drugs gets a citation, like a traffic ticket, with the maximum $100 fine waived if they call a hotline for a health assessment.
The state’s program, which has been advanced to establish and fund addiction recovery centers that would offer people aid rather than incarceration, is being watched as a possible model for different states.
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Drug overdose deaths in the state also hit an all-time high in 2021 with 1069, a 41 percent increase from 2020, Fox News reported.
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And of the 1,885 people who received tickets for personal possession in the first year, just 91 people, a measly one percent, called the hotline, according to its non-profit operator, Lines For Life.
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Earlier this month, those behind the scheme admitted that they had underestimated the effort needed to distribute the $300 million in funds for the program, and just $40 million has been spent.
“So clearly, if we were to do it over again, I would have asked for many more staff much quicker in the process,” announced Steve Allen, Oregon’s behavioral health director.
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“We were just under-resourced to be able to support this effort, underestimated the work that was involved in supporting something that looked like this, and partly we didn’t fully understand it until we were in the middle of it.”
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The ballot measure redirected millions of dollars in tax revenue from the state’s legal marijuana industry to treatment.
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Though applications for funding stacked up after state officials underestimated the work needed to vet them and get the money out the door, officials testified earlier this month before the House Interim Committee on Behavioral Health.
The health authority announced that $40 million in funds had been disbursed.
But roughly $265 million set aside for the 2021-23 biennium still hasn’t been spent, stated Devon Downeysmith, spokeswoman for the Health Justice Recovery Alliance.
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