NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Oregon Decriminalizes Some Hard Drug Possession

Data: Oregon House Bill 2355 –  https://legiscan.com/OR/text/HB2355/2017 -- that stiffens regulations on traffic stops and racial profiling – also reduces the penalty for first offense possession of small amounts of Schedule 1 drugs such as methadone, oxycodone, heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, and methamphetamine. The bill reduces penalties from a felony to a misdemeanor.  Oregon Gov. Kate Brown's signed the bill on Aug. 15.

Pro: The bill was filed at the request of Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who said in a release that the bill implements anti-profiling laws and reduces penalties for lower-level drug offenders. Oregon Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D.) – who is also a pharmacist and former Kaiser Foundation vice president of researchhttps://ballotpedia.org/Mitch_Greenlick  said in a Washington Free Beacon article http://freebeacon.com/issues/oregon-reduce-hard-drug-convictions/  "We've got to treat people, not put them in prison It would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having diabetes. … This is a chronic brain disorder and it needs to be treated this way."." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also supported the bill and said in a release https://www.aclu-or.org/en/legislation/defelonize-drug-possession-hb-2355 that the war on drugs has failed, and law enforcement money can be better spent elsewhere. It also says that minorities are unfairly targeted, and treatment, education and rehabilitation are the answers.

Con: The majority of Republicans in both House and Senate voted against the bill as well as some Democrats. Democrat Sen. Betsy Johnson said the bill was misguided and called it a "hug-a thug-policy." http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2017/07/oregon_bill_will_reduce_punish.html

Analysis:

1.       Statement: The war on drugs has failed: One could argue that the war wasn't lost, it was subverted by pharmaceutical firms. Bayer invented heroin as a supposedly non-addictive treatment for morphine addiction. Doctors then backed off use of addictive opioids for pain relief except in the most extreme cases. Then Purdue pharmaceuticals in 1996 marketed a timed-release tablet that the company said was a non-addictive opioid called OxyContin https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/lawsuit-pharmaceutical-companies-opioids/529020/  which came into use for all sorts of minor pains. Predictably, OxyContin acted like the opioid it was and hooked thousands of people, then spread illegally into the society and ushered in what is now officially called "The Opioid Crisis.". Similarly LSD was synthesized by a chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, was tested by the CIA at American Universities http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/23/the-legacy-of-the-cias-secret-lsd-experiments-on-america/, and spread into society pushed by Professor Timothy Leary and friends. Oregon was a leader in stopping methamphetamine use by passing a law in 2006 requiring a prescription to obtain the pseudoephedrine precursor. http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/07/oregons_meth_law_praised_as_so.html  Meth busts dropped in Oregon and Mississippi which had a similar law. But other states – under heavy lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry – failed to pass similar laws, and meth use rose again, as the precursors and meth itself were smuggled in from other states and Mexico. So why would pharmaceutical firms risk association with illicit drug use, addiction, crime, degradation and death? Because now that "the war on drugs has failed," and our prisons are full, "treatment" is advocated, states like Oregon are legalizing marijuana and reducing penalties for opioid use, and billions of dollars are going to treat opioid addiction. How is opioid addiction treated? With something called Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT). https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/15/medication-assisted-treatment-what-we-know/  MAT takes people addicted to heroin, for example, and switches them to legal pharmaceutical products such as methadone, buprenorphine, https://www.samhsa.gov/medication-assisted-treatment/treatment/buprenorphine  and naltrexone https://www.samhsa.gov/medication-assisted-treatment/treatment/naltrexone. The National Institute for Drug Abuse says addiction is a chronic disease which needs long-term care https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/treatment-approaches-drug-addiction so the recovering addict may need these prescriptions for the rest of his or her life. And big pharma also markets another drug to use in cases of opioid overdose, called Naloxone (Also called Narcan and Evzio). http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/drug-overdose-naloxone#1 A supply should be carried by thousands of first responders, doctors, and family members of addicts or those on opioid pain relievers. The cost of a dose just jumped from $575 a dose to about $4,500 according to Wired Magazine, and has a shelf life of 18-24 months. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/575-life-saving-drug-jump-4500-blame-perverse-system/  http://www.nchrc.org/programs-and-services/naloxone-101/

2.       Statement: "[Jailing drug addicts] would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having diabetes." See the above item on "medication assisted treatment," by pharmaceuticals. And the statement is uttered by a pharmacist. Many groups see addiction as a disease, including the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine https://www.centeronaddiction.org/what-addiction/addiction-disease The addict is not responsible for his addiction, says this theory, as it is changes in the brain and DNA which create addiction. It's all body, and body is what doctors treat. Even psychiatrists think addiction, depression, schizophrenia etc. are all diseases, thus the terms "mental health" and "mental illness." even though there are no scientific tests for disorders such as "oppositional defiant disorder" "ADHD" "obsessive compulsive disorder" and so on to the tune of some 300 different so-called diseases catalogued in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists to bill for insurance payments. There are tests for diabetes, but psychiatric "disorders" are simply voted on by psychiatrists from time to time, so that pharmaceutical companies can get busy and invent new pills. And thus we have speed given legally to children for not sitting still, the definition of autism expanded into "autism spectrum disorder" to scoop up millions more children and put them on expensive pharmaceuticals, and mental health given parity with physical health in the Affordable Care Act, to secure the funding for all this pharma. So the war on drugs has not been lost, it has been more clearly defined as a battle between pharmaceutical profits and the peace and security of American neighborhoods and families. And that is a battle we cannot lose.

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