Depending on who you ask, Oregon and Washington have been either reckless or trailblazing. In 2021, both states decriminalized possession of all drugs, a highly experimental move amid a growing opioid crisis in the Pacific Northwest. Measuring the success of these bills isn’t so straightforward, because there’s no one clear metric that captures the dangers of drugs. Residents of both states, particularly in major cities like Seattle and Portland, have noticed dramatic increases in visible drug activity since the bills took effect, the challenges of which have been well documented in local and national outlets. Washington’s decriminalization measure has since been rolled back. A pair of new studies, however, suggest that by other metrics, these measures may not have been responsible for harm in their first year. According to an analysis by a team at NYU, neither bill caused any change in the already-increasing numbers of fatal overdoses in each state, and, promisingly, the decrease in arrests for drug possession led to no increase in arrests for violent crimes. Perhaps, advocates suggest, Oregon’s experiment just needs more time to breathe. READ MORE |
