A12
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Drugs
Continued from Page A1
would allow districts to opt
out of the measure to allow
drugs to remain a crime.
“I believe that mental
health and addiction is an
issue,” Owens said. “There
needs to be a repercussion
for actions, and we’ve taken
all repercussions for actions
out.”
Owens said the state
could do more to treat addic-
tion, but he said people in
his district want drug pos-
session to remain a crime.
“We’ve allowed hard
drugs to be acceptable in
the view of our children by
passing this bill, and that is
wrong,” Owens said.
State Sen. Lynn Findley,
R-Vale, said he liked some
components of the law, but
he is not for decriminalizing
drugs.
He said counties should
have “local control” rather
than a “one-size-fits-all”
approach.
Findley said there have
been discussions about tak-
ing the approach lawmakers
used in 2014 when Measure
94 passed. Counties and
municipalities that voted
against the initiative were
given the option to ban pro-
duction and sale of mari-
juana locally.
He said it took 18 months
for the Legislature to pass
laws making Measure 94
work as intended. Measure
110, he said, is as complex.
“It’s going to take a while
to get there,” he said.
EOMG file photo
Thad Labhart, Community Counseling Solutions, clinical director.
From criminalization to
treatment and recovery
Measure 110 and what
it does
In November, Oregon
voters passed Measure 110
by a 59% margin. The initia-
tive is the first of its kind in
the United States.
Grant County voters
overwhelmingly
turned
down the Measure, with
2,811 opposed to 1,626 in
favor.
The law ends criminal
penalties for user amounts
of drugs, including heroin,
methamphetamine, LSD and
ecstasy, which will be pun-
ishable by a $100 fine that
can be waived instead for a
health evaluation.
The bill’s text also
reduces
penalties
for
non-commercial felony drug
possession cases involving
larger quantities.
Before, user amounts of
drugs were misdemeanor
crimes punishable by a max-
imum of one year in jail and
a fine of up to $6,250. Now,
it will be classified as a vio-
lation like a traffic ticket.
The measure requires
new “addiction recovery
centers” be set up around
the state, with at least one
in the service area for each
existing Coordinated Care
phetamine problem.
“The other side of this is
typically what we see,” he
said. “They commit crimes
to obtain things to sell to
buy their meth.”
He said when some-
one is issued a violation for
user amounts of drugs, in
the long run, it will extend
the time it takes to get them
through the system.
He said law enforcement
agencies will lack the ability
to get users into treatment
through diversion programs
tied to arrests.
McKinley said the ballot
measure was “misleading”
in how it was written, in that
it did not take into account
the shortage of beds at treat-
ment facilities in the state.
“We have a difficult time
getting the current patient
load that we have in to
inpatient treatment around
the state and finding a bed
available,” he said. “I don’t
know how it’s going to work
with the numbers that I think
they’re going to expect to be
pushed that direction.”
A Criminal Justice Com-
mission report found that
there are roughly 200 res-
idential treatment beds in
Grant County’s CCO, which
it shares with 11 other
counties.
Contributed photo
About 4.3 ounces of methamphetamine, along with drug par-
aphernalia, was discovered during a warrant search of a silver
Dodge Stratus stopped on Highway 395 north of Mt. Vernon
April 16, according to Oregon State Police.
Organization.
In the text of Measure
110, ARCs provide the
following: triage, health
assessments, referrals, peer
support and outreach.
However, in an opin-
ion piece in The Orego-
nian, Heather Jefferis,
executive director of the
Oregon Council for Behav-
ioral Health, and Se-ah-
GREAT STOCKING STUFFERS!
dom Edmo, co-chair of the
Oregon Recovers advocacy
group, said the measure
removes a pathway to addic-
tion treatment as it relates to
diversion programs.
They said a teenager
could get caught with a user
amount of drugs and only
have to pay a fine and would
be able to hide it from their
parents.
Many people struggle to
get clean, they said: If they
could do it on their own,
they would not be addicted.
According to an imple-
mentation schedule, the
Contributed photo
Grant County District Attorney
Jim Carpenter
measure will issue grants
for treatment providers to
expand treatment services,
but there’s no budget set.
That money comes out of the
marijuana tax fund currently
being used for schools and
other health programs.
A counselor’s
perspective
Thad Labhart, Com-
munity Counseling Solu-
tions’ clinical director, said
the measure will pull fund-
ing from existing communi-
ty-based treatment programs
and allocate it to the ARCs.
Labhart said it has its “pros
and cons.”
He said CCS does not
take a position on the
initiative.
Labhart said so far he is
“somewhere in the middle”
and much has to be deter-
mined on the state level to
implement the measure.
“The upside is it puts
focus more on treatment,
which I think, in many sit-
uations, has an upside for
low-level offenses,” he said.
“The downside is that it
removes funding from pretty
substantial influential exist-
ing programming and moves
it to an unknown.”
Law enforcement
outlook
In November, Grant
County voters overwhelm-
ingly turned down Measure
110 and overwhelmingly
elected Community Correc-
tions Director Todd McKin-
ley to head up the Sheriff’s
Office.
McKinley said he fears
the measure will backfire
and lead to an increase in an
already significant metham-
According to the Drug
Policy Alliance, the non-
profit group that backed
the measure, 9,000 peo-
ple a year are arrested in
cases where misdemeanor
drug possession is the most
severe offense.
According to Drug Policy
Alliance, low-level offenses
have long-term conse-
quences on employment,
education and housing. Typ-
ically, people become entan-
gled in the criminal justice
system, unable to get a job,
violate their probation and
end up back in jail.
Susan Church, the vice
chair of the Democratic
party in Grant County who
supported the initiative, said
she was not immediately
sold on the idea of decrim-
inalizing low-level offenses.
“When I first looked at
it, my immediate reaction
was, ‘Oh, that’s not going
to work,’” she said. “Then
I looked and did some
research on it, not just read-
ing the measure itself.”
Church said she believes
people would recognize
decriminalization is not a
“free pass” and the treat-
ment-focused approach will
address the drug problem in
the community.
Labhart said he appreci-
ates people’s concerns about
decriminalization and points
to the research as well.
“A lot of people want to
see folks locked up, and I
very much appreciate it,”
he said. “But again, from a
treatment perspective, it’s
been shown to work better
than incarceration for low-
level drug (offenses) as far
as recidivism.”
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