The Western U.S. has been conducting an experiment that went awry. What began as loosening restrictions on the recreational use of marijuana snowballed into legalizing the possession and use of hard drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. Now, states are starting to reconsider the wisdom of those policies. In this series, the Washington Examiner will take a look at blues states that are starting to come Down from the High .
At the beginning of September, Oregon ’s 3 1/2-year experiment with decriminalizing drugs came to an end as it reinstated some consequences for substance abuse.
The rollback of Ballot Measure 110 reinstituted misdemeanor charges for possession and public use of small amounts of drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. It came after Oregon saw overdose deaths skyrocket by nearly 50% between 2021 and 2023. Violent crime increased by 17% in the state, while the number of homeless people increased by 8.5% in 2023.
As neighboring states such as California, Colorado , and Washington eye the Oregon experiment, are they steering away from similar progressive crime policies?
Californians eye measure to crack down on drugs
California legalized recreational marijuana in 2016. And it remains the only fully decriminalized drug in the state. However, a ballot initiative called Proposition 47 passed in November 2014 that reduced the charge for using drugs such as fentanyl from a felony to a misdemeanor. Drug users are now commonly given a fine, court check-in, or misdemeanor and told to move along. “Diversion programs,” which rely on a treatment approach rather than an incarceration approach, also form a core part of Proposition 47.
The voter-passed ballot initiative has played out over the past 10 years in San Francisco, which forms the center of the state’s drug crisis. Drug use has skyrocketed in the city, where the drug overdose rate was more than double the national average last year.
“The problem is, is that like 95% of the people that get offered that treatment decline,” Tom Wolf told the Washington Examiner as he commented on the common police approach that offers drug users treatment instead of prosecuting or incarcerating them for more than a few days. Wolf was a onetime homeless recovering heroin addict from San Francisco and recently founded a drug advocacy group called the Pacific Alliance for Prevention and Recovery.
“They'll just give you a ticket, usually, and then take your drugs away and move along,” he said.
Wolf said addicts often decline treatment because they are afraid of withdrawal symptoms and "they know that under the current laws that are in place, they're going to be out of jail in 48 hours.”
Wolf pointed to positive polling on Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime ballot measure Californians will vote on this fall, as evidence they are fed up with the drug crisis in their state.
“People have realized that many of these criminal justice reforms kind of went too far, too fast,” he said, adding that there’s a “trend” that Californians don’t want to continue on the trajectory Oregon just finished.
Proposition 36, which is “strongly” backed by the state’s Republican Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, institutes felony charges for possessing certain drugs and for thefts under $950 if the offender has two prior drug or theft convictions. But it offers reduced charges conditioned on follow-through with treatment. Wolf said if drug users are staring down a felony, they’ll be more likely to take and follow through on treatment if it will help them get the charge down to a misdemeanor.
Colorado leans away from escalating progressive drug policies
Colorado became the first state to decriminalize recreational marijuana use in 2014. It’s also one of the only states to have decriminalized multiple psychedelic drugs and magic mushrooms.
For years, the state has relaxed crime policies, diverting a significant number of offenders from prison and shortening sentence lengths in 2010. Michael Steinberg, a former senior felony prosecutor, praised Colorado courts’ “very positive approach” to first-time drug offenders.
“It's not punitive, it's not jail, it's not fines. The goal is to literally cure the problem. And that's tried over and over again, and at some point, you know, judges will throw up their hands, or probation will say, ‘We cannot continue because this person is not taking it seriously,’” he said.
Average drug felonies for men dropped by more than 32% between 2010 and 2021, according to research by the Common Sense Institute. Between 2010 and 2022, the number of inmates in prison declined by 28.4%.
Meanwhile, the progressive Harm Reduction Action Center runs at least 20 centers in the state, distributing "safer snorting" supplies, clean syringes, and information about the safest way to use drugs.
Drug problems have rocked the state as the lenient policies have grown. More than 1 in every 10 Coloradans had a drug use disorder in 2021, one of the highest in the country. Opioid overdose deaths were up 54% in 2020 from the previous year. The crime rate increased by 32% from 2010 to 2022.
One of the nation's leading drug policy experts told the Washington Examiner he was worried state “enablement” is fueling the crisis.
“The trend we're seeing right now is kind of enablement in the west of drug use, of addiction under this guise of this is compassion or helping people who are addicted,” said Luke Niforatos, the executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
Niforatos is also concerned that lenient drug policies have turned into giant money-making schemes. He said that after the state legalized marijuana, key stakeholders realized that “they could build an industry and make a lot of money off of getting people addicted to more drugs.”
Colorado's state government and some of its local governments will receive more than $750 million in opioid settlement funds over the next 15 years from companies such as Walgreens, Johnson & Johnson, and CVS.
“The people seeking to make money off of legalization have hijacked harm reduction,” he said. “It's made more people addicted, and now we have people trying to make money off of it.”
There are signs the state is backing off from progressive policies.
Niforatos is encouraged that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has rejected injection sites. He also sees signs that Johnston has met with activists who favor tougher drug measures as a sign that the mayor is taking a more “even-handed” approach than progressives on the City Council.
Colorado lawmakers have also twice blocked legislation authorizing local governments to allow overdose prevention centers or injection sites. The state legislature most recently voted down such a bill earlier this year.
“Everyone in the country sees Oregon as a cautionary tale, that if you normalize drugs, it could be a disaster," Niforatos said.
Washington’s drug crisis: 'The broader public sees this and is not happy'
Washington passed a law in May 2023 that charges possession of drugs as a gross misdemeanor. People found with illegal substances typically receive a maximum imprisonment time of not more than 364 days, plus a fine of not more than $5,000.
In reality, the consequences of what people face vary across the state. Individual counties have freedom on what policies to prioritize and hold the ability to shift funding away from police departments, limiting their ability to enforce the law.
“We’ve seen cities and certain counties, mostly King County, who adopted these more liberal or progressive approaches to regulate to the use of hard drugs,” Republican state Sen. John Braun said.
Another tactic the state uses to target drug users mirrors California’s Proposition 36 initiative. The law offers a pretrial “diversion” program for those charged with simple possession. If the offender agrees to participate in a treatment program, the state dismisses the charge.
Before last May, Braun said, “Drugs were essentially legalized for over two years.”
Less than four years ago, it was a felony to possess and use prohibited drugs. That all changed when the state’s Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that the law was unconstitutional.
Following the court’s State v. Blake ruling, the Washington legislature passed a temporary law that made possession of drugs a simple misdemeanor. Police had to refer people to services twice before being allowed to make an arrest.
Drug problems rivaling Oregon’s ensued, and they were “in some cases, worse,” the senator said.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released this year found that Oregon and Washington saw the largest percentage increase in overdose deaths nationwide, with a 41% increase in overdose deaths between September 2022 and September 2023. Washington also saw a 51% increase in fatal fentanyl overdoses in 2023.
King’s County, described by Braun as having “adopted these more liberal or progressive approaches to the use of hard drugs” has been a hot spot for Washinton’s drug crisis. Drug fatalities from fentanyl increased by more than four times between 2020 and 2023.
“On the one hand, we have highly rewarding drugs which are widely available. And on the other, little or no pressure to stop using them,” Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychology professor who advised the Obama White House on drug policy, told the Seattle Times in 2022. “Under those conditions, we should expect to see exactly what Oregon is experiencing: extensive drug use, extensive addiction, and not much treatment seeking.”
The same year Washington reduced consequences for drug possession, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health rated the state as the third worst in the nation for illicit drug use disorder.
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In the aftermath of scaling back some of the progressive policies, Braun admits there remains “a very active and influential group here in Washington that is still hard-pressed to legalize drugs.” But he doesn’t think they’ll make much headway in the near future.
“We still have an alarming, tragic number of overdose deaths in our state,” he said. “I think the broader public sees this and is not happy about it”
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