SALEM, Oregon — Oregon state lawmakers have formed a new, bipartisan group focused on tackling the addiction crisis. They met for the first time in Salem on Wednesday afternoon. The group is called Joint Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response and it formed late last month.
It’s a move that some argue is long overdue. Lawmakers admitted Wednesday that addiction services in Oregon have been underfunded for years as the crisis got worse.
“We’re here today because the current state of the drug crisis in Oregon is unacceptable… We are grappling with cheap deadly fentanyl that has hit our streets in the last sort of three or four years in a big, big way,” Senate Majority Leader and committee co-chair Kate Lieber said during her opening remarks.
Less than 20 minutes into the meeting, technical difficulties brought it to a crashing halt. There was a bit of a recess before things finally got back to the focus of the meetings, which was how to increase access to treatment and addiction prevention tactics.
“We should be investing as a state in prevention actually doing the evaluation to make sure it’s effective it’s impossible to have enough treatment and recovery if we never look at prevention,” the first presenter said.
The group is also working to make sure law enforcement has what they need to keep communities safe, that includes making changes to Measure 110 — the controversial law that decriminalized certain amounts of hard drugs.
“Oregonians want this issue resolved. Oregonians believe Measure 110 has been a failure — it shows up in every survey that I’ve seen. It is incumbent on us as the legislature to address this as the emergency that it is,” said Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp.
'It's hard, it's complex'
Another committee co-chair, Democratic Rep. Jason Kropf, shared a similar opinion on the measure when KGW’s Blair Best sat down with him earlier in the day.
Best: Do you think Measure 110 is one of the things that is or isn’t working right now?
Kropf: I would say that’s a mix, so one example I think is positive, I went and visited one of our juvenile treatment facilities and had a chance to tour that facility. Measure 110 dollars have gone to that program … so that’s a positive about Measure 110 and I don’t want to go backwards … I think there’s also things about Measure 110 that aren’t working as well, we are open drug use and open drug market — that’s not acceptable.
Best: For many people, addiction and homelessness goes hand in hand. Is there going to be a focus on homelessness within this committee? Many people on the streets tell me personally that they became homeless and then they turned to drugs.
Kropf: I think that there is going to be work on this during the short session about how to make sure we have enough affordable housing. How do we have enough shelter for folks that are unhoused right now? … There is this uniform value that we want to help people who are struggling right now and it’s hard, it’s complex. There’s going to be a number of different ideas of how we can help those folks in crisis and this committee is set up to vet all those ideas.
Best: This is quite a complex problem and solutions will take some time — but for many areas, including Portland, time is kind of running out on the streets there.
Kropf: I don’t think we are this ... it's not just a wave a magic wand and we fix all the problems. Part of this is what are the immediate steps we can take right now.
The committee’s next meeting is on Nov. 6, when they will hear from law enforcement officers on what they are seeing on the streets when it comes to drug use.