Is the war on drugs back on? | The Excerpt podcast

On Sunday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: It's been just over 50 years since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Since then, drug policy at the state level has mostly been progressing toward legalization, embracing liberal attitudes that aim to destigmatize drug use. But that experiment may soon be drawing to a close. In the wake of surging overdose deaths, Oregon has recently moved to recriminalize drug use and possession. Are we back to square one? Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, joins The Excerpt to argue that policy makers simply didn't put the right safeguards in place.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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President George H. W. Bush:

All of us agree that the gravest domestic threat facing our nation today is drugs. Drugs have strained our faith in our system of justice. Our courts, our prisons, our legal system are stretched to the breaking point. The social costs of drugs are mounting. In short, drugs are sapping our strength as a nation.

Dana Taylor:

That was then President George HW Bush speaking in his first televised address from the Oval Office back on September 5th, 1989. Fast-forward 35 years, and a lot has changed with regards to how we view drug use, but have we really evolved our policy since then? Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. In 2020, voters in Oregon approved Measure 110, making it the first state in the US to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs.

Today, the Oregon legislature has just passed a bill to reinstate criminal penalties for drug possession. Does the demise of Measure 110 signal a return to America's war on drugs? Here to discuss Oregon's Measure 110 and drug decriminalization is Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the US, working to end the drug war. Thanks for joining me, Kassandra.

 Kassandra Frederique:

Thank you so much for having me, Dana.

Dana Taylor:

Measure 110, also known as the DATRA, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, was a significant win for drug decriminalization advocates. How did the drug policy shift in Oregon following its passage?

 Kassandra Frederique:

When Measure 110 passed, the point of it was to end the horrors of criminalization. So stopping the arresting of people with drug possession, because people recognized that arresting people for drug possession was not actually going to get people connected to the resources that they had or the resources that they needed. So when the measure passed, I think it had a rocky start in implementation, but the data and the research has shown that Measure 110 prevented tens of thousands of Oregonians from being shuttled into a horrific criminal legal system.

What we found, despite the rocky start of implementation that was created by the Oregonian bureaucracy, is that people did get connected to care. So in the first six months of implementation, Measure 110 increased services by 44%. It also improved the quality of care with 100% increase of people actually gaining access to everything from peer support to harm reduction services. And this includes 143% increase in people accessing substance use disorder treatment, as well as 296% increase in people accessing housing services, which was one of the biggest issues that people struggled with while Measure 110 was being implemented.

Dana Taylor:

Your organization, the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, has said that Measure 110 has been scapegoated by drug war advocates. How so?

 Kassandra Frederique:

So, so much of what Oregonians express frustration around were the conditions on the street. There was chronic homelessness that was exploding. There was a density population of unsheltered individuals. There was a lot of public drug use. And people made the connection to Measure 110, despite the fact that a lot of the issues and conditions that people were witnessing on the street and experiencing were a result of decades of inaction around housing.

It was about the fact that in the larger country, fentanyl, which is a more fast-acting opioid, has just made it to the West Coast, including Oregon, and that, in general, people's ability to get access to support has long been hindered by the lack of infrastructure in Oregon. And when I say the lack of infrastructure of support, Measure 110's purpose was to supplement the Oregon infrastructure.

However, what we learned was that decades of divestment in that infrastructure, as well as the Oregon Health Authority not listening to advocates about ways to improve the citation process, the ways that they needed to increase training for law enforcement about what Measure 110 did and what it didn't do, made it really difficult and confusing for Oregonians to actually see what was in front of them.

Dana Taylor:

According to the CDC, in the 12 months ending January of 2020, there were 621 overdose deaths reported in Oregon. Then in the 12 months ending January of 2023, there were 1,431 overdose deaths reported, a significant increase. Is it fair to tie that increase to the passage of Measure 110?

 Kassandra Frederique:

Absolutely not. And in fact, it's not just advocates that are saying that. RTI actually came out with a study, and they're not the only ones, that they looked at the same period. What they found was that there was not a shred of evidence that showed that Measure 110 actually increased crime, increased homelessness, or increase the overdose rate.

What people are attributing that astronomical increase to is the introduction of fentanyl into the West Coast drug supply. And we know this to be true because the pattern of growth that Oregon is experiencing is similar to the pattern of growth that we saw on the East Coast, in places like New York and Massachusetts, when fentanyl entered its drug supply. And so part of the thing that it's important to disentangle is that Measure 110 was coming into implementation at the same time that the Oregon drug supply was changing.

Dana Taylor:

You mentioned RTI. Who is RTI?

 Kassandra Frederique:

RTI is a research institution that held a conference a few months ago that looked at all the issues around implementation. They're also one of the academic institutions that is running an evaluation on Measure 110, about what worked and what didn't work.

Dana Taylor:

Measure 110 was also enacted, as you've said, to address concerns related to incarceration rates for people of color. What kind of movement have you seen there?

 Kassandra Frederique:

So here, one of the things that the Oregon officials that focus on criminal justice statistics have said is that the recriminalization of drug possession will increase the amount of Oregonians of color that are incarcerated, or arrested, or engaged by the criminal legal system. And so this is something that continues to be an area of concern for us because part of the impetus for pushing the end of criminalization or ending the arrest was because of the historic disproportionate law enforcement engagement in communities of color, specifically that of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Oregonians.

Dana Taylor:

I know that funding from marijuana tax revenue was allocated to expand access to addiction treatment services. Have any of those programs been successful?

 Kassandra Frederique:

You're seeing a 296% increase in people getting access to housing services. That would not have occurred outside of Measure 110. The money that people are able to put into these services have been really important. And I think you know that because when the conversation of recriminalization came up, everyone, all the elected officials said that that funding has to remain in place.

Dana Taylor:

Kassandra, is there any argument that substance abuse became more visible in Oregon, particularly in the Portland area, after Measure 110 passed?

 Kassandra Frederique:

I think this is a great conversation. Public drug use happens because people usually don't have access to shelter or a home. Most people who use drugs have homes and don't use drugs in the street, and most people who are unhoused don't use drugs. There is a growing population of people who are unhoused, who are using drugs in the street, and the preeminent factor in that public drug use is that they don't have a home. And so I think if you're looking at the history of how homelessness rose in this time because of the eviction laws that were passed, because of the COVID eviction moratorium protections that were lifted during this time, you'll see that the unsheltered population rose, and those that are struggling and using drugs to cope with being unsheltered became more public and more visible. And those issues can't be attributed to Measure 110. They're attributed to the longstanding issues in Oregon around homelessness.

Dana Taylor:

I want to turn now to the legalization of drugs versus the decriminalization was passed with Measure 110. You've advocated for legalization. What do you see as the upside of that?

 Kassandra Frederique:

I think in the moment that we're in right now, where our drug supply is continuously changing with more fast acting drugs, more powerful drugs, drugs that we have less scientific research around, it makes it more difficult for us to actually support people when the drug supply is shifting and shifting faster than we had in past years. And so, the conversation around the regulation of drugs is really about stabilizing the drug supply so that we can create the supports for people who use drugs.

Dana Taylor:

In 1970, President Nixon signed the CSA, the Controlled Substances Act, into law. Was the signing of that act the beginning of the war on drugs.

 Kassandra Frederique:

The signing of the CSA was not the beginning of the war on drugs. Unfortunately, the war on drugs globally has been going on for a very long time. And in the United States, the first evidence of it here is in the late 1800s in California, where we passed the first drug laws, in part as a political tool to control Chinese migrants who had been working on the railroad. And so, we have had a long-standing strategy around drug criminalization and drug prohibition that has honestly set up the situation that we're in today.

Dana Taylor:

What do you see as the specific failures of the war on drugs?

 Kassandra Frederique:

The war on drugs, as we see it, has really focused on criminalization. And that criminalization is not just something that we see in our criminal legal system. That strategy of criminalization, of surveillance, of stigma has infiltrated all our systems, and it's made it more difficult for us to give access to support for people who need it. It's also heavily relied on the legal system, which has incurred incredible amounts of incarceration, criminalization, deportation.

It's also really ripped apart families. People often don't speak to the ways that children are taken away from their parents, forcing other loved ones to be caretakers, and the disruption that is happening in the psychic impacts of what that looks like. And I think most urgently what we're seeing now is that our strategy of prohibition has made the drug supply more toxic and made it more difficult to manage, which has made it even more difficult for us to create the healthcare infrastructure to support people who are struggling with their use.

Dana Taylor:

The Drug Policy Alliance has spent the last two decades in the pursuit of alternatives to criminalization. How do we stem the tide on the abuse of drugs like fentanyl?

 Kassandra Frederique:

Part of the things that we really need to focus on is what are the supports that are necessary for people? How are we giving people access to public education about fentanyl? How are we giving public education about all drugs? How we're giving public education around testing materials, giving people the opportunity to have testing materials so that they can know what is in their drug supply before they use them. How are we increasing access to different kinds of addiction services? So not just inpatient and outpatient treatment, as people traditionally have known. But what are the additional supports that can lead to someone stabilizing their use? And I think we have to look at our healthcare system, which has also really been impacted.

Dana Taylor:

Kassandra, as you know, there are people who are opposed to Measure 110 and have been since the beginning. What do you see as the path forward that will benefit all of the communities that are grappling with drug addiction and the people living there?

 Kassandra Frederique:

I think we have to remind people that criminalization is not an appropriate way to deal with drug use. We know that because overdose has gone up in the hundredfold inside jails and prisons. We know that because when people come out of a jail in prison, they are 27 times more likely than the general public to have an overdose. People are frustrated, and I can appreciate that. I'm frustrated as well. My family members are frustrated with that as well. I'm living in the same wall that everyone else is, I'm experiencing the same wall that everyone else is, and I just truly believe that criminalization is not a pathway forward for us to get the things that we say that we want.

Dana Taylor:

Kassandra, thank you for being on The Excerpt.

 Kassandra Frederique:

Thank you for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock, for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.