Portland mayor drops plan to ban public drug abuse

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said he is abandoning his plan to ban public drug usage, coming five days after he announced it. 

According to the Willamette Week, Wheeler said in a Tuesday statement, "We believe that House Bill 2645 addresses our primary concerns about the public health crisis unfolding on our streets, and it restores necessary law enforcement tools that were envisioned in my own ordinance." 



House Bill 2645 increases criminal penalties "for possession of certain amounts of fentanyl." 

The enrolled version of the bill classifies the possession of more than one gram of fentanyl or more than five of another substance containing fentanyl as a Class A misdemeanor.

Wheeler's initial plan would have banned the public consumption of hard drugs, including fentanyl. 

Measure 110 in Oregon, which passed in 2020, reduced the penalties for other hard drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamines. The penalties for small amount of the drugs, which were once a Class A misdemeanor, were knocked down to a Class E violation that is "punishable by a $100 fine" or the person could "instead complete a health assessment at an Addiction Recovery Center."

Since the passage, Oregon has had to implement a new drug addiction service model because of the increase in drug usage in the state. Doctors specializing in addiction also warned that Oregon has become too lax on measures that would quell drug use in the state. 

Fentanyl was not mentioned in the measure at the time.

In April of this year, a research center took a poll of Oregonians in the state. The majority of them found that the measure has had a terrible impact on drug overdoses with 63 percent of them supporting "bringing back criminal penalties for drug possession."

Overdose deaths from fentanyl have risen substantially since 110 was implemented in 2020.