Oregon abandoned its radical drug law. Then came the mass arrests

The Guardian

31-03-2025

At 7.45am on a cool February morning in Medford, Oregon, six police officers pulled up to a desolate road lined with tarps and a shopping cart and began making arrests.
The officers directed four adults to sit on the sidewalk, handcuffing them behind their backs and rifling through their pockets. They were being detained for illegal camping, but the officers were also searching for evidence of drugs.
'Love you!' a husband and wife shouted at each other as they were separated to be taken to jail.
Officer Paul Verling placed one 43-year-old woman in the back of his car while his team tested a confiscated glass pipe for drug residue. He told her she could potentially avoid jail if she entered drug treatment.
The woman said she had been using methamphetamine to cope with homelessness and would be grateful for treatment. But once Verling ran her name through the system, he discovered she had a warrant for a probation violation. That made her ineligible for 'deflection'. She, too, would be going to jail, he said, possibly for a month.
'You wanna engage in some rehab when you get out?' he said.
'Yes sir,' she mumbled.
'I'm glad we had this talk today,' Verling said, as he took her out of the car to escort her into a jail enclosure.
Welcome to Oregon's 'war on drugs' 2.0.
In September, Oregon lawmakers enacted legislation turning low-level drug possession into a more serious crime punishable by up to 180 days in jail. The resulting crackdown has led to thousands of arrests statewide in recent months. People targeted in cities like Medford, and overworked public defenders tasked with representing them, say the drug enforcement has been chaotic and at times brutal.
While the new policy has appeared to reduce visible drug use in some public spaces, unhoused people, who have been most impacted by the police response, say it has exacerbated their struggles.
The new law also marks a stunning reversal of policy for the Pacific north-west state.
Just four years ago, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, a groundbreaking drug decriminalization measure that abandoned jail sentences for possessing small amounts of drugs and imposed an infraction citation instead. Passed on the heels of Black Lives Matter uprisings, the measure aimed to treat addiction as a disease instead of a crime, prioritize services and recovery over jail, reduce overcrowding behind bars and help address racial disparities in policing and prosecutions.
At the time, Oregon was grappling with rising overdoses. It ranked second nationally for drug addiction rates and worst in the US for access to treatment. The problem was systemic, rooted in decades of failure to invest in the level of behavioral health services needed for people with mental illnesses and addiction. Measure 110 called for an infusion of $302m for addiction recovery and harm reduction services, with a focus on underserved communities, including Black and Indigenous people impacted by criminalization.
Drug policy reform advocates hoped the first-in-the-nation decriminalization experiment would become a model.
But the timing could not have been worse. The law went into effect in 2021 as fentanyl was rapidly entering Oregon's unregulated drug market, the pandemic was shuttering vital social services and homelessness was surging amid Covid and unprecedented wildfires.
As Measure 110-funded recovery programs were just getting off the ground, the decriminalization measure was widely blamed for crime, surging fentanyl overdoses and the increasing visibility of homelessness and drug use, even as research suggested a complex set of factors behind these trends. The backlash was fierce, and the state's Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, signed the bill last year recriminalizing possession.
Supporters say the renewed enforcement is restoring order on the streets, while helping people with addiction and maintaining funding for services. Kotek said she did not want the policy to be 'business as usual' of jailing drug users, but a 'treatment first' approach. The bill encourages counties to set up 'deflection' programs, enabling some arrestees to forgo charges if they get help for their substance use disorders. People with possession cases can also avoid conviction if they complete probation, and lawmakers have promised pathways for records to eventually be expunged. And part of the funding for new treatment programs first passed under Measure 110 has remained intact, enabling some innovative projects to continue their work, though with fewer resources.
Implementation of the new law varies widely by county. Data reveals some jurisdictions are launching mass arrests, while referring very few people to treatment.
The Medford police department has led the state in drug criminalization – by a lot.
The city is located in a region near the California border that is one of the more conservative areas of a blue state; more than half of voters in Jackson county, which includes Medford, supported Donald Trump.
From September, when the new law was enacted, through 26 March, the Medford police force carried out 902 drug possession arrests – more than double the number of cases in Portland (a city with seven times the population). Jackson county has logged 1,170 arrests total.
Verling, an officer on the city's 'livability' team, a unit focused on low-level crimes, including unlawful camping, trespassing, public drinking and drug possession, said many police were relieved when drugs were recriminalized. The 2020 reform had led to increasing reports of drug use on the streets and growing concern about public intoxication.
Recriminalization, Verling said, allows him to engage people in hopes of pushing them to treatment. 'I really don't want to see someone go to prison … but this gives us the ability to get back into their lives,' he said on a recent patrol through Medford.
He said the job was most rewarding when seeing someone turn their life around after they've been jailed – and when his team arrests dealers, potentially 'making people sober by making the drugs inaccessible'.
One of the livability team's main priorities has been clearing homeless encampments, and as Verling drove his patrol car onto a pedestrian greenway, the impact was clear. During the pandemic, encampments were a common site. Now, there were few visible signs of homelessness. Several locals were jogging.
Where did people go?
'People leave town. They're like, 'OK well it's a crime to camp here,'' he said, adding he believed many were in shelters.
The issues of homelessness and drug addiction are deeply intertwined, and Verling said he had become adept at spotting signs of drug use and paraphernalia: 'Focus on their hands – that will lead you to it.'
Oregon's recriminalization law allows the state's 36 counties to adopt individualized approaches to deflection.
Jackson county designed its program so officers could directly hand over arrestees to drug treatment programs instead of jail, a collaborative approach meant to get people immediate help without involving the courts. But many don't qualify, aren't offered this alternative during their arrest, or they decline an officer's offer. According to the latest available data, while there have been nearly 1,200 possession arrests, as of 27 March, only 69 people have been referred to deflection.
Instead, many get arrested. And rearrested. One 43-year-old unhoused woman said police were 'acting like every person on the street is a drug addict, which is not true', and that she had been arrested four times by Medford's livability team since October, generally for camping violations. While she was quickly released after her last arrest, her partner was not, leaving her to camp outside alone. The woman, who asked not to use her name out of fear of police retaliation, said she was sleeping in front of a social services center in hopes her partner could easily find her when he gets out. 'The separation makes me feel like I can't breathe,' she added. 'Police say they're helping the homeless, but they're just throwing us in handcuffs and jail.'
Inside the county jail, as livability officers were processing an arrest of an unhoused man who had camped under a bridge, officer Elliott Jantzer said the hardest part of the job was 'arresting the same person over and over again and seeing no change'.
'Society is supposed to fix these problems. We can't really fix it. We don't have capacity,' he said.
But the criminal justice system is where most people targeted by the new law end up.
On two days that week in February, dozens of defendants waited to be arraigned in courtroom 301 of the Jackson county circuit court justice building. Some appeared in person in the windowless hearing room, others appeared over video from the county jail in Medford. Some pleaded with the judge, saying they needed to get home to take care of children, asserting the charges were incorrect or expressing bewilderment about the entire ordeal.
None of the jailed defendants had lawyers for their cases, and most said they wanted one. One man facing a drug possession charge quietly asked for a lawyer, but then changed his mind and pleaded guilty, seemingly hoping for a quicker resolution.
The defendants were there on all types of charges, but when drug possessions were called for defendants not already in jail, the outcome was the same: the defendant didn't show. 'Failure to appear – warrant', the judge repeated four times.
The scenes laid bare the impact of recriminalization on the state's criminal system, which for years has struggled with a massive public defender shortage, in part due to difficulties recruiting lawyers to the low-salary, high-caseload jobs. In that particular week, there were more than 900 defendants in Jackson county alone who, despite having active criminal cases, had no lawyers.
'It's a violation of their constitutional rights,' said Clint Oborn, executive director of the Southern Oregon Public Defenders (SOPD), walking back to his office after arraignments. 'Some people plead guilty and never get an attorney, or if they want one, they're put on a waiting list.' Most clients with drug possession cases who don't show up to court are unhoused and eventually get jailed on warrants, he said.
Cyril Rivera Neeley, one SOPD attorney, said one of his clients was a senior citizen charged with drug possession in September who refused to plead guilty, had to wait five months for a trial and then was jailed for missing a court appearance; another is a defendant who thought they were being hospitalized for a mental health episode, but was instead jailed for a drug misdemeanor when officers found paraphernalia.
Patrick Green, the Jackson county district attorney, said he supported recriminalization because defendants end up supervised by probation officers, who hold defendants accountable and connect them to treatment and services. And he argued jail can be helpful: 'We know with addiction, you do have to get a person some clean time for them to be in the right frame of mind to be willing to engage in treatment.'
But he also acknowledged that the return of possession arrests had increased his staff's caseloads. The majority of his 18 prosecutors have had to take on these cases, giving them less time for other matters, and the new law has exacerbated jail overcrowding, he said. Many possession cases are resulting in 'conditional discharge', he said, where defendants waive their right to a trial or an attorney and are immediately placed on probation, but can be jailed again if they lose contact with their officer or commit other violations.
'Once they get out of jail, they often keep using, their probation gets revoked and they return to jail,' said Colin Murphy, another public defender. 'It's the same cycle I saw before we decriminalized. If this approach to getting rid of drugs in our community actually worked, it should have worked by now, because we've been doing this since the 1970s.'
The strategy diverts police away from serious investigations, he said: 'We're told law enforcement has very scarce resources. But in these possession cases, I see five cops standing around investigating one unhoused person because she had a baggie in her pocket.'
With limited use of deflection, and a shortage of lawyers to represent people, the new system has felt pointless to some unhoused people in Medford.
'It's not fair, it's unethical, it's a fucking scam,' said 34-year-old Nikki, sitting early one morning under a bridge in Medford's Hawthorne Park. A thick layer of fog hung in the air, and she gestured at the flowing creek beside her: 'Look at how beautiful this place is.'
The state's affordable housing shortage is the primary driver of homelessness, with over 27% of renters facing severely unaffordable rent, forced to spend half or more of their income on housing. Some unhoused people like Nikki come from out of state in hopes of better services. Her main motivation, she said, was healthcare: she's a transgender woman, and her deep-red home state of Missouri had become a leader in anti-trans laws and medical restrictions. But she also liked the environment of Medford, in an area known as the Rogue Valley. There's a backdrop of mountain ranges, and a greenway bike path connecting local cities.
'It's been awesome living here, and it's been shit,' said Nikki, who asked to use a nickname as she talked openly about drug use. She said she regularly uses meth and has done stints in rehab that didn't last.
She said she had spent time in the county jail when she was picked up on warrants, forced into the men's section. For people with serious addictions, detox in jail is 'horror beyond what you can imagine', she said. Incarceration can also increase overdose risks when people are released with lower tolerance.
Now, Nikki tries to sleep in hidden corners in the woods where police won't bother her – 'out of sight, out of mind'.
Christopher De Falco, a 30-year-old who had gathered in Hawthorne Park for a weekly potluck lunch for the unhoused, said he had long dealt with addiction, homelessness and incarceration and felt the new approach would help few people getting sober: 'Until the person truly wants to quit, they're not going to. Forcing people into treatment, it's against our will and unjust.'
Nearby, 38-year-old Ray, who only gave his first name, said going to jail felt routine to him: 'another day in the office.' He heard other countries had safe injection sites, which he said seemed like a better way to get people into services than jail time.
Nikki said one Medford officer recently came up to her while she was sitting by the creek asking, 'What's in your bag? What's in your pocket? Where are your drugs?' she recounted. 'I didn't even have drugs on me!' She said she was being profiled: 'I've got two bags, messy hair, dirty pants and dirty shoes.'
As she described the encounter, a Medford 'livability' officer drove by. Nikki jokingly hummed a Nazi anthem as the vehicle passed, adding: ''livability' just means they work for everybody but you.'
People who do enter deflection in Medford are often taken by officers directly to the Addictions Recovery Center (ARC), one of two treatment providers partnering with police on the program. Staff address participants' basic needs, including food, clothes, medications; conduct an addiction assessment; and place them in temporary shelter. The clients are required to complete ten appointments, generally within 30 days, which can include meetings with counselors or peer support staff, at which point the threat of prosecution is erased.
Ben Spence, ARC's community justice program manager, said roughly half of their participants have successfully completed deflection; some people fail when they become unreachable, though his staff works hard to track people down and keep them engaged. The ten appointments are just a start to their recovery journey, he added.
Of the 69 referrals in the county, as of 27 March, 23 had successfully completed the program, 26 had failed and 17 remained in the process, said Vicky Armstrong, the county's deflection coordinator. She emphasized that the program was in its early days and that deflection was just one of many pathways into treatment: 'You can't legislate people into sobriety. You can legislate opportunity.'
Green, the DA, said he felt deflection was a better path to treatment than the criminal system, which can be a slow process, and that the fact that only some people were succeeding was a good sign: 'We didn't [make it] too easy or too hard. We really found that sweet spot.'
At Medford police headquarters, Lt Rebecca Pietila, in charge of community engagement, said law enforcement viewed recriminalization with deflection as a 'compromise – a happy medium'. She said deflection was working well due to close partnerships between police and providers, noting that Jackson county had a higher success rate than the state average.
She said it would take time to build law enforcement buy-in as many officers were pleased to have an opportunity to restart arrests. 'They want to hold people accountable, because we know drug crime is not just about addiction, it leads to theft and disorderly behavior and victimization,' she added.
Pietila said she would like to see drug laws become tougher, with stiffer penalties for certain possession quantities, and that she supported efforts to expand the county jail so more arrestees could be held longer. For unhoused people with severe addiction, 'sometimes jail is the only intervention'.
For many in the region, it is still easier to get a jail cell than into treatment.
OnTrack Rogue Valley, another drug treatment provider and deflection partner, has more than 300 people on its waitlist for residential programs. That includes 200 people waiting for a 16-bed program, said executive director Sommer Wolcott. 'Many of those 200 people are unhoused with severe substance use disorders who desperately want a treatment bed,' Wolcott said. 'They need 24-hour care and support. They can't just stop using.'
Some people are stuck for more than a year on the waitlist, and at times, when staff try to track them down, they discover the client has died of an overdose.
Wolcott personally knows of three people who died while on her treatment waiting list last year. But, she said, there could be many more.
As Medford police escalate their crackdown on possession, and treatment facilities remain at capacity, some advocates are doing their best to keep drug users safe and alive through harm reduction. Max's Mission, a southern Oregon group founded by a couple whose son died of an overdose in 2013, does weekly outreach in Hawthorne Park, which involves syringe exchanges, connecting people to housing and treatment services and giving out tarps, socks, snacks, wound care kits and naloxone, the overdose-reversal drug.
Crystal Bilyeu, who was helping lead Max's Mission outreach one recent afternoon, said she had reversed 48 overdoses with naloxone, including 17 in 2024. The 41-year-old was herself unhoused and struggling with addiction in the early years of the pandemic. While living outside, she would give out cards advertising a 'never use alone' hotline people can call while using so that EMS can be alerted if they overdose, and she became known as someone who always had naloxone in her backpack.
The strict anti-camping laws worsened her substance use disorder, she said, as she often used drugs to stay awake since sleeping brought the risk of trouble with law enforcement. 'I used it for survival,' she said. She got clean after she became pregnant, she said, and Julia Pinsky, Max's Mission founder, got her a motel room until she could get into treatment. Having somewhere stable to sleep made the start of her recovery possible, she said.
Bilyeu, who was eventually hired by the organization, now gives out harm reduction supplies to the same communities she used to live with. 'We meet people where they are at,' she said. 'I think empathy matters. I've been there before and I can help them with an open mind and no judgment.'
The presence of someone like Bilyeu can be the difference between life and death. Later that day, Christy Sexton, 50, stopped in Hawthorne Park to greet another volunteer assisting the unhoused. Her 31-year-old son, Mike, had died of a fentanyl overdose two weeks earlier, she said, and she had just viewed his body. 'He looked very peaceful,' Sexton said. 'I couldn't stop kissing his head and telling him how much I loved him.'
Sexton is unhoused, living in her car, and her son was also struggling with homelessness. She described him as 'everybody's friend' and a devoted son: 'He made sure every single day that I knew how much he loved me.'
She didn't know the circumstances of his overdose, but wished more people were aware of the state's Good Samaritan law, dictating that people can't be prosecuted for drug possession if they seek aid for someone overdosing.
While starting to process the shock of her son's death, she said she was plagued by the thought that someone might have been too scared of police to call 911 – and instead left her son to die.
'I'll never understand why my son's life had to be taken.'