Serving Central Oregon since 1903 • $1.50
Monday • June 7, 2021
Pandemic
BALANCING ACT
GAMES
FOR
SOCIAL
GOOD
Architect of Oregon’s vaccine
lottery supports the concept
By JoHn noTaRIannI
Oregon Public Broadcasting
The tagline is pretty easy to under-
stand: Get a vaccine, get a chance to
win a million bucks.
That was the scheme cooked up
by Ashby Monk when Oregon State
Treasurer Tobias Reed gave him a call
in April.
Monk is the executive and research
director at the Stanford Global Proj-
ects Center. He’d spent much of his
career studying institutional invest-
ing before turning his attention to a
thornier question: how to motivate
people to make smarter long-term
personal finance decisions.
On the phone, Reed was looking
for creative ways to convince more
people to get vaccinated. Oregon’s
vaccination rate had been strong for
several months, but demand was be-
ginning to taper off as the most vac-
cine-hungry Oregonians had already
scheduled their appointments. The
state still had a long way to go to hit its
aim of a 70% vaccination rate by July
4, President Joe Biden’s target.
How do you help the vaccine-am-
bivalent get off the fence and get their
shots, quickly?
Monk’s answer was also elegant in
its simplicity: make it a game.
Saving to win
Monk said convincing the vac-
cine-hesitant to sign up for a shot
carries a lot of the same challenges
he saw when he was researching how
to motivate people to begin saving
money. In both cases, there are a lot
of up-front challenges, and the long-
term payoff is hard to visualize.
“Many people are intimidated by
personal finance,” he said. “There’s
tons of misunderstanding, there’s high
cost, you have to put money away.”
With COVID-19, the combination
of uncertainty about the vaccine itself,
an unwieldy scheduling process and
competing obligations for personal
time was preventing many individu-
als from prioritizing their vaccine ap-
pointments.
Monk said the one thing that
wouldn’t work, though, was telling
people what’s best for them.
“There’s a whole world in the per-
sonal finance space that’s focused on
financial literacy,” Monk said, “which
is another way of saying, ‘Let’s just try
to teach everybody how to behave.’”
Photo by Ryan BREnnECKE • The Bulletin
olter Thomas, 11, of Bend, fights to stay upright on the balance beam as several bags
spin around him while he spends the sunny afternoon with a friend at the Woodward
WreckTangle, an outdoor ninja obstacle course in the Old Mill District, on Saturday.
Monday is forecast to be partly sunny with a high of 59 degrees.
C
See Lottery / A10
Nose doesn’t know: Drug-sniffing K-9s are retiring
By dEnISE LaVoIE
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. — Asking dogs to
follow their noses won’t work anymore
in states that have legalized marijuana.
As Virginia prepares to legalize
adult possession of up to an ounce
of marijuana on July 1, drug-sniffing
police dogs from around the state are
being forced into early retirement, fol-
TODAY’S
WEATHER
lowing a trend in other states where
legalization has led to K-9s being put
out to pasture earlier than planned.
In Virginia, the rush to take mar-
ijuana-detecting dogs out of service
began even before lawmakers voted
last month to accelerate the timetable
for legalization. A separate law that
went into effect in March prohibits
police from stopping or searching
Partly sunny, nice
High 59, Low 40
Page a10
INDEX
Comics
Dear Abby
Horoscope
anyone based solely on the odor of
marijuana.
Virginia state police are retiring
13 K-9s, while many smaller police
departments and sheriff’s offices are
retiring one or two dogs. Most are in
the process of purchasing and training
new dogs to detect only illicit drugs,
including cocaine, heroin and meth-
amphetamines. Some departments
are unable to afford up to $15,000 to
buy and train a new dog, so they are
disbanding their K-9 units.
Virginia State Police K-9
aries detects and tosses
a test rag during a train-
ing exercise at state
police headquarters
in Richmond, Virginia,
on May 10. drug-sniff-
ing police dogs from
around Virginia are
being forced into early
retirement as the state
prepares to legalize
marijuana July 1.
See K-9s / A10
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A3
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Nation/World
A9
A2
A3-4
Puzzles
Sports
Weather
Steve Helber/AP
A8
A5-6
A10
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Police dogs are getting out of the business early as
states legalize marijuana — Virginia is next on July 1
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