Clear Majority of Oregon Voters Support Repealing Drug-Decriminalization Ballot Initiative: Poll

Amid a spiraling addiction crisis and rampant homelessness, a clear majority of Oregon voters now say they support repealing the 2020 ballot initiative that decriminalized user amounts of street drugs, including hard drugs like heroin and methamphetamines, a new poll found.

Over two days in early August, Emerson College Polling asked 1,000 registered Oregon voters if they believed Measure 110 should be repealed in full, if portions of the law should be repealed restoring penalties for possession of small amounts of hard drugs, of if the drug-decriminalization effort should be left as is. The poll was released August 23.

When given the choice between full repeal and leaving Measure 110 in place as it is, 56 percent of respondents backed full repeal. When given a similar binary choice between repealing portions of Measure 110 to reinstitute penalties for drug possession or leaving the law as is, 64 percent of respondents chose the partial repeal option.

While both men and women supported a full repeal, men were more likely than women to support that option (58.3 percent to 53.3 percent), the poll found. Women, on the other hand, were more likely to support a partial repeal than men (67.5 percent to 61.1 percent).

Multi-racial and Hispanic voters were the most likely to support a full repeal (70.6 percent and 67 percent), while Asian and white voters were least likely (48.4 percent and 53.5 percent respectively), the poll found. Whites were least likely to support a partial repeal (61 percent).

Voters between 50 and 64 years old were most likely to support a full repeal of the drug decriminalization measure (65.3 percent), while a majority of the youngest voters, 18 to 34, supported leaving the law as is (55.6 percent).

The poll backs up reporting by National Review published earlier this month about the declining support for the fledgling drug decriminalization effort in Oregon.

“Oregonians were sold a narrative by those looking to expand addiction in the name of ‘bodily autonomy’ and addiction-for-profit. Now, two years into their new reality, it’s clear residents are waking up to the impact these drugs are having on their communities,” Kevin Sabet, president of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions, said in a prepared statement. Sabet’s foundation commissioned the poll.

In November 2020, Oregon voters overwhelmingly passed Measure 110, or the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, with 58.5 percent of the vote statewide. Proponents, led by the George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, spent millions of dollars promoting the initiative.

Advocates promised a new, progressive approach to addressing drug addiction, saying that people with substance-abuse disorders “need adequate access to recovery services, peer support and stable housing.” And, advocates said, drug addicts need treatment “through a humane, cost-effective, health approach,” not to be treated like criminals.

Once passed, user amounts of hard street drugs were decriminalized, and “harm reduction” efforts — helping addicts to use drugs more safely — were prioritized. People caught with small amounts of drugs started receiving citations, like a parking ticket, and a $100 fine, which can be dismissed if the offender calls a treatment referral hotline and completes an assessment. Money from the state’s marijuana tax was going to be redirected to recovery services.

But more than two years later, critics say the money for recovery services was dispensed slowly. During that period, with the rise in fentanyl abuse, drug-overdose deaths have skyrocketed and squalid homeless camps have proliferated. Only about 1 percent of people ticketed for drug possession have called the new hotline for help, an audit found.

A majority of Oregonians polled by Emerson, or 54 percent, said they believe Measure 110 has increased homelessness in the state. Half of the poll respondents said they believe that drug decriminalization has made the community much less or somewhat less safe.

Forty-one percent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker who voted to repeal Measure 110, compared to 33 percent who said they would be less likely to vote for that lawmaker, and 25 percent who said it wouldn’t impact their vote.

In Clackamas County, one of three Portland metro-area counties, commissioners voted in June to pose two non-binding questions to their voters next year to gauge their support for repealing Measure 110. Commissioners said the drug decriminalization experiment has been an “unmitigated disaster” and has turned the state into the “wild, wild west of drug abuse.” The commissioners said they believe their residents would support a repeal.

“I do think there are a lot of people like me, left of center, who are realizing it was a mistake,” Lisa Schroeder, a downtown Portland restaurant owner who voted for Measure 110, told National Review recently. “If I could turn back time and repeal Measure 110 tomorrow, I would do it.”

Supporters of Measure 110 say Oregonians need to be patient and give the new policy more time to prove itself. “We’re building the plane as we fly it,” Haven Wheelock, a backer of Measure 110 and a supervisor at a Portland homeless-services provider told the Atlantic recently. “We tried the War on Drugs for 50 years, and it didn’t work … It hurts my heart every time someone says we need to repeal this before we even give it a chance.”

Sabet, a one-time drug policy advisor to presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, said that the poll shows that Oregonians, both Democrats and Republicans, have “buyer’s remorse” for passing Measure 110, and the law’s “days are numbered.”

“Drug Policy Alliance and their allies in the addiction-for-profit industry have spun a narrative that making drugs legal will improve people’s lives but the data and the science shows that’s not the reality,” he said in a press release. “It’s time for political leaders in both parties to look at the facts and the science, recognize that Measure 110 has failed and enact necessary reforms to improve everyone’s quality of life.”