Oregon Democrats propose changes to fix Measure 110 but draw criticism from GOP lawmakers, DAs and others

(Update: Adding video, comments by Bend lawmaker; DAs and sheriff's displeased with less strict proposal)

One key issue for some: a proposal to reclassify possession as a Class C, not A, misdemeanor

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- After weeks of hearings in Salem, the Oregon Legislature's Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response outlined their proposal for legislation to fix the much-criticized flaws in Measure 110 that they say will expand addiction treatment, deter public drug use, and improve community safety.

The panel was formed in the wake of sharp criticism of the rollout and impacts of voter-approved Measure 110, especially it's decriminalization of small amounts of drugs amid a surge in abuse and overdoses, many of them fatal.

Rep. Jason Kropf, a Democrat from Bend, said during Tuesday's presentation, "Regarding possession of drugs, we're going to make possession of a small amount of drugs like fentanyl and meth, a class C misdemeanor, with the requirement that law enforcement offer a behavioral health door first to those folks."

Changes to the measure would involve possession of a "personal" amount of illegal drugs becoming a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail, or a $1,250 fine.

As of now, under Measure 110, possession of under a gram of fentanyl or heroin, for example, is only a violation, subject to a ticket and a maximum fine of $100.

Under the proposal, a citation could be dismissed by calling a 24-hour hotline to complete an addiction screening within 45 days, but those who don't do a screening aren't penalized for failing to pay the fine.

Senator Tim Knopp, a Republican from Bend, is among Republicans who don't think the proposal is strict enough: "I think there needs to be an ability for protection of those that are in that facility, and some discretion for the landlord as such to be able to keep those people safe and make a determination on that."

The Coalition to Fix and Improve Ballot Measure 110 said in a statement "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."

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon pushed back on Democrats' proposals, stating the added penalty will "ensure our addiction and homelessness crises will continue for years to come."

Proposed changes to Measure 110, from both Democrats and Republicans, are set to be formally introduced during the legislative session in February. Lawmakers will have just 35 days to debate the pros and cons and pass a bill, once the session begins February 5th.

Other proposed changes to the measure include that those who are arrested for possessing small amounts of drugs be referred to a peer support specialist. If they show up to the meeting, they wouldn't be charged for possession. If they don't, the offense could be referred to the district attorney's office.

And speaking of DAs, a coalition including Oregon DAs and sheriffs, which proposed their own set of fixes, expressed disappointment with the Democrats' proposal of a Class C, vs. Class A misdemeanor.

Here's their statement:

Here's the full statement from the committee co-chairs on their proposal, and the reaction news releases that we've received so far:

Legislation to Expand Addiction Treatment, Deter Public Drug Use, Improve Community Safety Outlined

Salem, Ore. – Today, the Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response outlined its legislative proposal to combat the drug crisis by expanding access to addiction treatment, deterring public drug use, and improving community safety. The proposal is the result of a four-month bipartisan effort to find solutions that will increase access to drug treatment, prevent addiction, clean up our communities, and keep Oregonians safe.

"We need to urgently expand drug treatment and addiction prevention in our state while stopping drug dealers, confiscating hard drugs, and cleaning up trash and graffiti," said Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber (D - Beaverton), co-chair of the joint committee. "We won't solve this problem overnight, but this plan will get people the help they need, clean up our communities, and save lives." 

"We said when we started this new committee process in the fall that we were going to approach this problem from both a public health perspective and a public safety perspective," said Representative Jason Kropf (D - Bend), co-chair of the joint committee. "With this proposal, we are braiding together the public health and public safety systems to create as many effective pathways to treatment and recovery as possible through proven, evidence-based solutions."

The legislation will be introduced as an amendment to House Bill 4002 once the 2024 legislative session begins February 5th. The committee will hold public hearings on the proposed legislation during the upcoming legislative session. The initial amendment to the bill will include provisions that will put Oregon on a path toward:

Increasing Access to Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) by: 

• Banning health insurers, health benefit plans and Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) from imposing prior authorization or other utilization review for drugs used to treat substance use disorders.

• Allowing pharmacists to prescribe and dispense emergency refills of medications used to treat opioid use disorder and requiring health benefit plans to reimburse the cost of emergency refills.
  
• Requiring the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission (ADPC) to study removing barriers to MAT interventions in emergency departments and report recommendations to the Legislature.

Ensuring Consistent, High-Quality Care Statewide by:

• Applying CCO network adequacy standards for providers to addiction treatment providers.

Making the Addiction Treatment System Responsive to Fentanyl by:

• Extending welfare holds to allow a treatment facility or sobering center to hold an incapacitated person for 72 hours (up from 48 hours) due to fentanyl staying in an individual's body for longer than other opioids. 

Building More Proven Community Clinics to Treat Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Needs by:

• Expanding Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic operations in Oregon and establishing the program within the Oregon Health Authority. Minimum services for these health centers will be identified in the bill. The bill will require OHA to submit a plan to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for adding new certified community behavioral health clinics to a demonstration program by January 15, 2025 and seek approval for federal financial participation in the program by September 2025.

Preventing Homelessness for People in Recovery by:

• Extending fair housing standards to cover individuals prescribed MAT. Long-term care facilities and residential facilities will be prohibited from refusing to admit an individual based on that individual's involvement with medication-assisted treatment for a substance use disorder.

Building Up the Drug Treatment and Mental Health Workforce by:

• Requiring the ADPC to study and deliver recommendations to the Legislature by 2025 on ways to reduce barriers to substance use disorder treatment provider credentialing. 

Protecting Our Kids from Drugs by:

• Requiring the ADPC to study and deliver recommendations on specific strategies to improve access to substance use disorder treatment for youth.

Stopping Drug Dealers by:

• Prosecuting more drug dealers through restoring Oregon law to what it was for 34 years before the 2021 Hubbell decision, ensuring that someone with a large stash of drugs and paraphernalia can be charged for delivery of a controlled substance. 

• Creating steeper penalties for drug dealing in a public park and within 500 ft. of substance use disorder treatment centers and homeless shelters.

• Asking the courts to keep dangerous drug dealers in jail pre-trial. The bill would direct the Chief Justice’s Criminal Justice Advisory Committee to evaluate the pretrial release criteria for persons arrested for Delivery and Manufacture of Controlled Substances.

Deterring Public Use and Confiscating Drugs by:

• Building a path from public use and possession to recovery through creating a Class C misdemeanor for possession with requirements for a deflection program to create more offramps to treatment.
  • A pre-booking deflection program must be offered to a person and declined before they can be prosecuted for possession of a controlled substance.
    • Deflection consists of a behavioral health intervention focused on helping individuals into drug treatment, supporting their addiction recovery and connecting them with peer support.
  • Class C misdemeanor for possession of drugs carries up to 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine – the same class of crime as a petty theft.
    
• Giving police officers a way to legally confiscate drugs as current law is unclear on their authority to do so. Creating a Class C misdemeanor will give officers this legal footing to get dangerous drugs off our streets. The Class C misdemeanor will also allow officers to stop public drug use – an unintended consequence of Measure 110.

Monitoring Law Enforcement Interactions by:

• Requiring any enforcement of delivery of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance – including officer-initiated stops and prosecutions – to be reported to the Criminal Justice Commission. Data will be monitored for racial and other demographic disparities. The CJC will report annually to the Legislature on its findings starting August 2025.

Increasing Funding for Emergency Mental Health and Addiction Services by:

• Expanding the IMPACTS Grant Program, giving communities more resources to treat people with mental health or substance use disorders before they end up in jail or the hospital. The grants could be spent on supporting deflection programs, mobile crisis units, mobile MAT programs, MAT in jail and case management or peer support for homeless people living with a substance use disorder.

The committee will continue to receive input from the public on this proposal and develop a complimentary budget package through the Legislature's Ways and Means process. Additions to this proposal the committee is considering include:

• Supporting the construction of shovel-ready mental health and addiction treatment projects.
• Allocating money to ODOT to support removal of trash and graffiti.
• Launching statewide and local fentanyl awareness campaigns.
• Creating a Task Force on Regional Behavioral Health Accountability.

The Legislature will consider additional bills in the upcoming session that will address other aspects of the drug crisis, including: 

• Funding for recovery housing to keep people housed while in treatment.
• Funding for the expansion of post-plea diversion via drug courts.
• Improving access to medication-assisted treatment in jails.
• Strengthening protections for behavioral health care workers.
• Funding behavioral health care apprenticeships.

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Republican lawmakers' news release:

Democrats Unveil ‘Measure 110 Lite’

Proposal doesn’t solve Oregon’s drug addiction crisis

SALEM, Ore. – In today’s Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response, Democrats unveiled their not-so-grand plan to address Measure 110. Republicans have also introduced several key pieces of legislation which can be found on OLIS. A brief media availability will be held outside of the Senate Republican Office after the Democrats’ press event.

“Above all, I am saddened by the Democrats’ lack of interest to do what is necessary to end the drug addiction crisis, which is killing people young and old every single day. They are instead choosing to listen to special interest activists and pursue an omnibus bill reduced to window dressing,” said Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp (R-Bend). “While Democrats kick the can down the road, we will continue to put forward bold solutions that will stop the drug crisis in its tracks.”

“The proposal we saw today is one chock full of farcical fixes which will work about as well as the drug treatment hotline. Measure 110 has proven that voluntary addiction treatment does not work and keeps people chronically addicted. Oregonians overwhelmingly agree that we must scrap this naïve approach, but the Democrats’ proposal keeps the status quo in place,” said Representative Christine Goodwin (R-Canyonville). “Oregonians deserve better than this weak proposal. It will do almost nothing to save lives, clean up our streets, and restore safety to our communities.”

“Oregonians have made it abundantly clear: we must reestablish hard drug use as a class A misdemeanor so that rehabilitation treatment can be required. The current system does not include such power and a low-level class C misdemeanor only provides 30 days in jail as an alternative. This is nowhere near the amount of time needed to address addiction,” said Representative Kevin Mannix (R-Keizer). “Our current system is not compassionate. People are hurting. The Legislature has a responsibility to step up and meet this challenge.”

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Leader Jeff Helfrich Statement on Democrat’s M110 Proposal

SALEM, Ore. – House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich issued the following statement in response to House Democrats unveiling a proposal that fails to fix Measure 110:

“Clearly Democrats in the legislature haven’t walked the streets to see the crisis Measure 110 has caused. The Republican bill restores accountability, ushers addicts into treatment, and makes our streets clean and safe again – none of which will be achieved with the majority’s proposal. While people suffer, the majority party ignores Oregonians’ calls for bipartisan action, choosing instead to pander to radical special interests with a bill that solves nothing. Oregonians have demanded real solutions, and that is what House Republicans will continue to strive for.”

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News release from Oregonians for Safety and Recovery:

Lawmakers reverse Oregon’s public health approach to addiction:  propose jail and fines and increased harm to Black and brown Oregonians.  

Today the Joint Interim Committee on Addiction and Community Safety announced that they plan to reverse the state’s public health approach to addiction and impose a criminal penalty for people not able to access treatment. Under the proposal, possession would be punishable by 30 days in jail and/or a fine of $1,250, ensuring that our addiction and homelessness crises will continue for years to come, and setting up a complicated and expensive process for people charged with possession that is doomed to fail.

Advocates for real solutions and a true public health approach to addiction gathered in Salem today to call out the utter failures of leadership and  policy in the legislative proposal and demanded that lawmakers do better.

"We all want real solutions to the overdose crisis and homelessness. But what state lawmakers are proposing is an utter failure of leadership to our communities. Their proposal will make drug addiction and homelessness across our state worse, more difficult and expensive to solve. When they push forward with criminalizing people with substance use disorders – by giving them jail time and fines – the government, our lawmakers, are choosing to inflict harm and violence on vulnerable Oregonians, especially Black, brown, low-income, and rural Oregonians. Oregon's prison system is the biggest illegal drug market in our state and many folks living on the street today with drug addictions are those who were previously incarcerated in state prisons and never got the help they needed,” says Gloria Ochoa-Sandoval, Policy and Political Director at Unite Oregon Action. “We know it is less expensive over time to fully invest in the real solutions needed across Oregon – more detox, treatment, housing, non-police mobile crisis counselors, and community cleanup and revitalization efforts. But criminalizing in a state that previously prohibited Black people from living here and was built on institutional racism will always be easier, but never less costly.”

Oregonians for Safety and Recovery urges the committee to focus on what will actually work:  increasing services across the board. This includes rapidly expanding peer outreach workers and treatment professionals, more investments in detox capacity, and expanding drug treatment, harm reduction programs, and housing.

According to Andy Ko, executive director at Partnership for Safety and Justice, “Treating the tens-of-thousands of Oregonians suffering from addiction as criminals is pointless, irresponsible, and profoundly wasteful. Regressive policies of the past half-century too often elevated punishment as if it were health care. We need an honest response to the health crisis we face.”

Providers who serve people in recovery say that putting criminal penalties on addiction will harm their ability to serve the people in their care. Iron Tribe Network, which receives Measure 110 funding,  is a community organization committed to building community through wellness and recovery programs, including peer support and housing. They focus on family preservation and reunification. The organization provides recovery housing and peer support for individuals and families in Multnomah, Columbia, Clatsop, and Marion Counties. There is considerable demand for recovery housing. All of the homes we acquired with Measure 110 funds reached capacity in the first week of opening and are now all operating with extensive wait lists.

“When we have waitlists for services already, what is the point of threatening people with jail? Not only is it cruel and unnecessary, it will waste untold tens-of-millions of dollars in the criminal system instead of investing in housing, treatment services and the things we know will work to get people the help that they need,” says Meli Rose, Director of Operations for Iron Tribe. “When the state arrests people for drug use, they separate and displace families. We want to keep families together. When people have criminal records for addiction, they permanently exclude people from job opportunities. The legislature should delete the portions of the bill that impose criminal penalties and waste money and double down on increasing treatment funding.”

Oregonians for Safety and Recovery have identified the following issues with the legislative proposal:

1. The Legislature is proposing to overwhelm our local criminal systems. Today Oregon has only 1/3 the public defenders needed to manage the current caseload. Oregon is under a federal order to release people within 7 days if there is no public defender. Criminalizing addiction would exacerbate this by adding potentially thousands more adults and youth — simply for possessing very small user-level amounts of drugs — to the already unmanageable caseloads.
2. The Legislature is proposing the infliction of more government harm and violence on Black and brown communities. Black and brown Oregonians will be arrested at higher rates and be most likely to face incarceration and harsher sentencing. Today, even after Measure 110, Black Oregonians are issued M110 citations at double the rate of their population and Portland police have the 5th highest arrest rate disparities in the country. People of color are disproportionately excluded from diversion and are more likely to be placed in diversion programs that disproportionately fail people of color. In other words, more Black, brown, and Indigenous people will be convicted, get criminal records, and be incarcerated — which will lead to higher levels of drug addiction, overdose deaths, poverty, and homelessness.
3. The Legislature is proposing to harm rural Oregonians and make addiction worse in our rural communities. Almost half of people in rural areas who used unlawful drugs were in prison or jail within the last six months.
4. The Legislature is proposing a destructive revolving door treatment system that hurts people suffering with addiction. There is minimal treatment available for anyone, including people who are arrested. Hooper Detox turns away 200 people a month. People arrested will be charged, released, and sent back to the streets with life-damaging criminal records that make it more difficult to get housing, government assistance, jobs, and education.
5. The Legislature is cruelly criminalizing homelessness and poverty –— which are the result of their own policy failures. Oregon has high public drug use because we have unacceptable numbers of homeless people. The Legislature isn’t talking about going after people using drugs in their home. They are targeting people in poverty — whose private suffering is in public view. They are most vulnerable to the revolving door of despair and government harm and violence that comes from policing and arresting people with addiction.
6. The Legislature is proposing spending massive amounts of taxpayer dollars on state and local governments to build out an ineffective criminal system. The proposal adds layers of exorbitantly expensive, unfunded expenses to our criminal system, which already costs Oregonians billions in tax dollars annually. Lawmakers have not shown how much all of this will cost, how they will pay for it, or how they will prevent this from defunding real solutions like treatment, housing, non-police mobile crisis counselors, and neighborhood revitalization and cleanup efforts.
7. The Legislature is proposing forcing people into torturous withdrawals and increasing overdose deaths. County jails are currently seeing record deaths among people in custody — including by drug overdose — and do not have the ability to safely manage fentanyl withdrawals. After going through excruciating pain, people will be released back to the streets, which is the most dangerous time for overdose risk.
8. The Legislature is giving lip service to successful treatment while setting people up to fail. Their proposal disqualifies people from expungement options if they have relapsed in the past, even though most people attempt recovery multiple times before success.  60% of people who start treatment in a given year do not complete it, whether treatment is voluntary or mandated. This could mean that a significant number of adults and youth will be incarcerated and have life-damaging criminal records because they relapse.
9. The Legislature is repeating the State’s failures and creating massively expensive, overly complicated, and violent systems that have failed in the past, are not evidence-based, and will delay and defund real solutions to the addiction crisis. The State failed to implement Measure 110 in a timely manner and now the Legislature proposes to throw out years of work to create new crimes and complicated bureaucracies that will take years to implement. The most recent research from Portland State University says there is no evidence that repealing Measure 110 will result in improved treatment through the criminal system because that system has never successfully connected people to treatment.

About Oregonians for Safety and Recovery:

Oregonians for Safety and Recovery (OSR) coalition members include ACLU, ACLU of Oregon, Drug Policy Alliance, Ebony Collective Coalition, Health Justice Recovery Alliance, Imagine Black, Partnership for Safety & Justice, and Unite Oregon, working collaboratively to defend Measure 110 and decriminalization while advocating for real solutions including increased investment and accessibility to drug treatment, detox, and housing services to urgently meet the full needs of people experiencing addiction.