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Arrest of a man who was smoking fentanyl, Portland, Oregon, February 7, 2024. DEBORAH BLOOM/REUTERS

Alongside San Francisco, Portland, the economic capital of Oregon, has long been a favorite target of Republicans for its criminal justice policies, which they consider too liberal. With less than seven months to go before a presidential election marked by the theme of crime, local Democrats have just given the American right something to crow about.

On April 1, Governor Tina Kotek signed a bill that recriminalizes the possession of hard drugs, reversing the decriminalization that had been approved by more than 58% of the state's voters in November 2020 amid the euphoria of anti-racist protests. The non-repressive policy "failed," admitted Portland's Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler. The admission has given grist to the mill for Republicans, who have made security particularly at the Mexican border, where they have no qualms about conflating crime and immigration their preferred line of attack for the November 5 elections.

Oregon's decriminalization in 2020 an unprecedented measure in the country had been hailed as the vanguard of a new approach. America was acknowledging the failure of Richard Nixon's "war on drugs" in June 1971. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, many were sympathetic to the argument African American intellectuals had been making for years: The all-out crackdown had led to a phenomenon of "mass incarceration," disproportionately hitting young Black people.

The measure, passed in 2020, limited possession of drugs such as fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine to a $100 fine, and endorsed the creation of a detoxification program, funded by taxes on cannabis sales and savings in prison budgets. During arrests, police officers were supposed to hand addicts a card with the hotline number of a treatment center and inform them that the fine would be waived if they called. In 15 months, only 119 people called the number. No fines were paid. The cost of running the hotline was $7,000 per call.

The backlash was not long in coming. At the end of 2023, business figures including Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, one of Oregon's flagship companies, invested $700,000 in a campaign to recriminalize drug possession. Democrats rallied behind the cause. In March, legislators in the state House of Representatives and Senate passed the reform by a large majority. The new legislation continues to prioritize detoxification treatment, but it re-imposes prison sentences (of up to 18 months).

"What Oregon did was a bold experiment, and it failed," Wheeler explained to the New York Times on Monday, April 1. "Let's just be honest about that. The timing was wrong, and frankly, the politics were wrong." The mayor blamed inadequate treatment services, which should have been in place long before decriminalization. Above all, he added, American cities were unprepared for the epidemic of overdoses due to synthetic opioids.

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With fear of crime on the rise, Democrat US cities introduce harsher policies - Le Monde