In 2020, Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved Ballot Measure 110, making Oregon the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs and greatly expand addiction services and social supports through redirected marijuana tax revenue and law enforcement savings.
But in 2024, drug possession was recriminalized after an intense disinformation campaign by drug war defenders and by Oregon leaders who scapegoated Measure 110 for every issue in the state. They put political interests such as re-elections over facts and Oregonians’ well-being. They also sacrificed Black and Indigenous/Native lives to bow down to a predominantly corporate interest group led by the former chief of Oregon’s prisons.
Yet more than 50 years of evidence from the drug war shows that arresting and jailing people for drugs is a failed approach.
Here’s what happened: Read our fact sheet.