SALEM, Ore. — While a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Salem continues to draw up legislation that would overhaul Oregon's drug policies after many hours of hearings, House Republicans could not wait for the upcoming legislative session in February before firing an opening shot at the controversial measure that decriminalized user amounts of drugs.
In a statement, multiple GOP lawmakers — including several who sit on the bipartisan Joint Interim Committee On Addiction and Community Safety Response — outlined a bill that they said would "end" Measure 110.
“This bill reflects the unanimous position of our House Republicans that we need to return to significant accountability for the use of street drugs," said Rep. Kevin Mannix (R-Salem), who sits on the committee. "This requires official authority to intervene in a serious way so we can assure society that we are pressing forward on a system covering both public safety and the provision of compassionate rehabilitation services to addicted persons.”
The draft bill, which does not have a number because the session has yet to begin, would re-classify possession of any illicit drug as a Class A misdemeanor, in even the smallest quantities. It would also mandate drug treatment for someone caught with drugs to avoid jail time, would ban public use, and would require evaluation and treatment as part of probation for certain drug and property crimes.
In some cases, a person convicted of a drug crime would be able to seek expungement of their criminal record after getting clean.
“If you can walk around using drugs, open air, it's not acceptable. You have to have accountability with that, and I don’t think people realize that,” said House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich (R-Hood River). “We need to have accountability in the justice system.”
Drug dealers and manufacturers with multiple convictions would get mandated prison sentences, and it would add penalties for dealers who sell drugs that cause someone's death — creating a Class A felony crime for that purpose with a sentence ranging from 58 to 130 months. Currently, alleged dealers can only be charged in federal court for causing a death.
The bill would also increase the length of time that someone "incapacitated" by drugs or alcohol can be held involuntary in a sobering or treatment facility, from 48 hours to 72 hours.
In the section addressing probation, House Republicans also proposed cutting out one clause that could have substantive changes not outlined in their statement. Currently, the law requires that someone on probation obey all laws; municipal, county, state and federal, "and in circumstances in which state and federal law conflict, obey state law." The draft bill would cut that line.
Theoretically, this omission would mean that the use of cannabis would become a probation violation by virtue of being a federally illicit substance, regardless of whether the conviction was for substance use or if sobriety was included in the terms of probation.
An addition Republicans made to the statute reinforces that alteration. Anyone on probation would be barred from using or possessing controlled substances unless it was a medical prescription, no matter the conviction or terms.
Two portions of the bill allocate new funding. One would be a grant program operated by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, funding "rapid opioid overdose response teams" in cities and counties. The other would authorize the state treasurer to issue lottery bonds to build up treatment facility infrastructure.
“That’s the next phase of our conversations — what is it going to take, what facilities are already out there, and look at that as a wholistic approach from the state,” said Helfrich.
For both the grant program and the lottery bonds, the amount of funding that the bill would allocate remains a blank in the draft bill that would need to be filled in by lawmakers.
The 'fix and replace' Measure 110 model
Much of the draft bill championed by House Republicans is ripped straight from proposed ballot measures circulated by a political group that emerged in September, called the Coalition to Fix and Improve Ballot Measure 110. The group, which quickly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from major Oregon business leaders, pledged to circulate one or both of its two proposals if lawmakers did not act quickly to overhaul Measure 110.
RELATED: Drug decriminalization would go up in smoke under proposed Measure 110 'fix,' but that's not all
Republicans' bill resembles the more drastic of the two proposals. Beyond recriminalizing drug possession, it would also radically change the way that drug treatment gets funded — and how those funds can be used. The bill would take Measure 110's grant funding apparatus away from its oversight council and the Oregon Health Authority, instead shifting that authority to a body called the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission.
This piece of Measure 110 already saw some reform last legislative session. State lawmakers passed House Bill 2513, which gave the Oregon Health Authority a larger and more distinct role in administering Measure 110 grants, also giving them the funding to ensure that they can sufficiently staff the program. But this bill would remove OHA from the equation.
Instead of limiting grant funding to Behavioral Health Resource Networks or BHRNs, the drug treatment organizations currently funded by Measure 110, the bill would open up funding to counties, cities and school districts. And funding would no longer be limited to treatment — the bill states that grants and funding can be provided to "cities and counties to support enforcement related to community harm reduction services."
The Coalition to Fix and Improve Ballot Measure 110 seems to have coined the term "community harm reduction." Under the coalition's definition, it does include drug courts and diversion programs for people who might otherwise face arrest or jail time. But it also includes "focused deterrence to eliminate overt drug markets," which suggests that the funding could be used to bankroll law enforcement missions aimed at cracking down on drugs.
“It’s good that legislative leaders are listening to Oregonians and moving to fix the failures of Measure 110," said Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton in a statement on behalf of the coalition. "But anything short of reclassifying deadly drugs as a Class A misdemeanor crime will be inadequate to effectively steer more people into more treatment more quickly. With addictions and overdoses on the rise, the legislature needs to act swiftly and boldly to fix Measure 110 when it meets in February."
'I feel heartbroken'
Morgan Godvin works for ACLU of Oregon, and sits on the Measure 110 Oversight and Accountability Council, which this bill would eliminate. She's also a recovering heroin addict who is intimately familiar with the system that existed prior to Measure 110.
“I feel heartbroken,” Godvin told KGW. “There is no evidence anywhere in this country that incarceration or the threat of incarceration reduces rates of addiction."
Godvin acknowledges that Oregon is in the midst of a drug crisis, and said she isn't opposed to banning public drug use. But she'd like to see the state put its efforts behind prevention and treatment instead of incarceration.
"How about we focus on expanding the treatment resources that we have now or making our behavioral health system work better," she said. “Is public drug use a problem? Yes and I’ve been asking them to address that for two years. And instead we are going to go back to the system we had before. It’s not hypothetical — we know what happens when drug use is criminalized. I lived through it, we lived through it, you can look at 49 other states."
Even if the bill funnels people arrested for drug possession into treatment, Godvin argued, it may be putting people who are unprepared for that process into an already overloaded system, taking that opportunity away from people who are actually ready to seek help.
Not the final word
Though Republicans sitting on the Joint Interim Committee On Addiction and Community Safety Response sponsored this draft bill, Democratic leadership clarified that the bill does not necessarily represent the output of that bipartisan community.
"We are working, in conversation with our Republican colleagues, to put together a proposal that connects people to addiction treatment, gets drugs off our streets, and keeps our communities safe," Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber (D-Beaverton), who co-chairs the committee, said in a statement. "We know we cannot go back to the failed war on drugs, and we cannot continue to allow Oregonians to die of drug overdoses on our streets. A policy has not been finalized, but once we do have a proposal to put forward, we look forward to thoroughly vetting the ideas through a public process."
In a final meeting prior to the beginning of the legislative session, members of the committee outlined three legislative concepts as committee bills — essentially bill drafts, as they don't have specific language for bills ready for release as yet — focused on the addiction crisis, behavioral health, and public safety.
But Rep. Jeff Helfrich told KGW that he and his Republican colleagues have not seen the proposals that Lieber and the other Democrats are working on. He said they are not being invited to meetings on the topic.
Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland), another member of the committee and a proponent of finding ways to improve on Measure 110, said he had not heard that Democrats are forwarding any bills that would repeal the measure.
"Changes, yes," Nosse said, in short. "Repeal, no."
According to Lieber's office, they are considering all options when it comes to improving Measure 110, including re-criminalization of drugs.