Things might have been bad before but since the 2020 presidential election, the country has quietly begun to spiral. Very little attention is being given to down-ballot measures and decisions that could change the very integrity of our country.
There were plenty of places in our country where the next politician wasn’t the only issue on the ballot, and some of the initiatives that won the vote were extremely wild.
Oregon made history Tuesday in the movement to reconsider the nation’s war on drugs by becoming the first state to decriminalize small amounts of heroin and other street drugs.
Voters overwhelmingly supported Measure 110, a coup for the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, the same criminal justice reform group that backed Oregon’s successful marijuana legalization effort in 2014.
The vote was staggering, with 59% in favor of the movement.
Peter Zuckerman, campaign manager for Measure 110, called the win “a big step forward.”
“Today is a huge day of celebration but the work is not over and we have a lot more work to do to win a better system for everybody,” he said.
The new law would drastically alter not only the way police interact with drug offenders but how drug offenders would be allowed to roam freely interacting with the public.
It reduces misdemeanor drug possession to a non–criminal violation on par with a traffic offense. People with small amounts of drugs including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, LSD, psilocybin, methadone and oxycodone will get a ticket and face a $100 fine or have the option of being screened for a substance abuse disorder.
So the bright side is that those fines would become part of a broader fiscal initiative to fund treatment centers and housing for those affected by drug addiction.
