It Could Happen Here - Oregon Decriminalized Drugs, Now Politicians Are Trying to Re-Criminalize Them

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Robert sits down with city defense attorney Grant Hartley to talk about the battle over Oregon's historic decision to decriminalize drugs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end

of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. CallZone Media. everything. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I am once again, Robert Evans, talking about it happening here. And in the case of today, because we mean something different every time I introduce the show that way, we're talking about the carceral state and the worst reactive impulses of society coming for people who use drugs recreationally, who either have a problem or don't with them and simply don't want to go to prison for it. And specifically, we're talking about all of that within the context of the state of Oregon where I reside. We're talking about all of that within the context of the state of Oregon, where I reside, because back in 2020, the state of Oregon passed a measure, the first in the nation, decriminalizing all simple possession and use of street drugs. So heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana was already legal.

But, you know, everything is you can't get arrested for simple possession of small amounts of stuff. Right. That's the gist of the law. This passed by a pretty wide margin, 58 point something percent of Oregonians voted for it. It was a ballot measure, not something the legislature pushed through. And it came as Oregon, like the rest of the country, was kind of wrapped in the grip of an escalating drug crisis. In 2020, and again, that's before the ballot measure passed, Oregon had the second highest rate of drug addiction in the country and ranked nearly last in access to treatment. From 2019 to 2020, opioid overdose deaths in Oregon increased by about 70%. So that makes the case that the problem prior to the ballot measure was

pretty severe and that the current state of affairs, which was everything was illegal and you could go to jail for possession of, say, heroin, was not working out for anybody. However, in the years since the ballot measure passed, overdoses have continued to rise in Oregon and miraculously almost, the drug problem did not solve itself overnight. Now, we're going to be talking about some reasons for that, but now it is time for me to introduce our guest for the episode, Oregon public defender Grant Hartley. Grant, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Robert.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first off, I wanted to say, from where you're standing as somebody whose job is to represent Oregonians, generally with the least resources who are charged with crimes. What were you seeing prior to 110 and what are you seeing after it? Well, I think prior to 110, we had a population similar to what we have now, which is individuals who were struggling with houselessness, with housing instability, who were struggling with mental

health. And as a result of many of those factors and others were coping with substances. And as a result of that, many of them would get wrapped into the legal system. And one of the issues with our legal system is that it is based on compulsion. And so when someone came into the system with a drug problem, our first reaction is to compel them into treatment, to force them into treatment, even though we know that that is not effective. And, you know, at times it can be. And generally where you see the most success with it is where there's more hanging over the person's head, more leverage that the system has. And so, you know, somebody who has a substance use disorder and commits a robbery and is put on probation and they have a choice between going to prison and doing treatment, much more likely to engage in treatment. But when you have low level possession, where as a society,

we've deemed that it should not be punished by prison. And frankly, that should not be punished by jail. The problem is, is that the only tool that the system has is jail. And so if somebody says, I'm not ready for treatment, the system says, well, we're going to put you in jail then. And then they go to jail. What little they

have is destabilized and they get out without any treatment. And as you mentioned in the opening, the biggest thing is just the incredible dearth of services in our community. There is not nearly enough outpatient treatment, but especially inpatient treatment. And that's important for those houseless folks because you can't expect somebody to engage in outpatient treatment, but especially inpatient treatment. And that's important for those houseless folks because you can't expect somebody to engage in outpatient treatment and then go back and sleep on the street at night and not use. So that's, I think, the general gist of what it looked like. Yeah, I think that's all really important to keep in mind. And it's particularly important. And the reason we're doing this episode is because the last two years really is when it's escalated. We have seen this increasing and very organized campaign against 110, and it's being pushed by the police who are angry that

they're not able to arrest more people, particularly more homeless people. It's pushed by a lot of business owners who have convinced themselves that the reason why downtown Portland has had such a hard couple of years is because there's too many homeless people and they can go after them and get them off the street by having them arrested. This is all my opinion, not yours here. But there has been – what is not up for opinion is that there has been an escalating campaign to portray the measure as a disaster and to portray it as the center of particularly Portland's ills, but also more broadly, the state of Oregon's ills. And I think there's a number of reasons why that's dishonest, which we'll talk about. But where that's kind of culminated now is this year, there are two big pushes to get rid of 110. One of them is the push by a ballot measure or to put out a ballot measure basically repealing 110 as it exists. And the other is a push by the legislature.

And you kind of have separate plans pushed by the Dems and the Republicans to, in the case of the Republican plan, basically put things back to the way they were, if not more severe in terms of your ability to arrest people for possession. And the Democrats' plans is to recriminalize possession, but make it all basically the lowest level of misdemeanor. I don't think either of those are good plans, but I wanted to talk about kind of how you would characterize the backlash campaign against 110 and how much of it do you think is rooted in actual problems caused by the measure?

No, I mean, it has caused most of the backlash. I would agree with you that it is a lot of business communities, but it's also just, you know, average Portlanders because what they see is people on the streets struggling, using drugs in public because that is the only place that they can use drugs. And, you know, that's a problem of houselessness. People have to ask themselves, am I upset that I'm seeing to ask themselves, am I upset that I'm seeing somebody use drugs or am I upset that this person is sleeping on the street and needing to use the drugs in the street? And that is the same of business owners. You know, they call and complain that there's somebody on the stoop next to them using fentanyl. But is the issue that that

person is using fentanyl or is the issue that that person is on the stoop next to them because there are no housing services in our city? And so really, Measure 110 is being scapegoated for two huge issues, which is the influx of synthetic heroin or fentanyl into our community and into every community around the nation. It is not restricted to Portland or to Oregon because we decriminalized. It is everywhere. And then just the houselessness crisis, which is tremendous in our city. It is so bad. And people are essentially arguing that because we decriminalize drugs, more people are on the street.

And I just don't think that there is any data to support that. Yeah. And I think part of the reason why people suspect that is, again, because of how much dramatically worse the problem has gotten in recent years. But it's gotten worse everywhere. It's gotten worse in states like Oklahoma, where it is and has remained very illegal to possess this stuff. Oregon is not the state with the worst death problem due to drugs per capita. And the states that are worse or are worse in various ways are all states in which it's criminalized. Like, well, we passed 110 in 2020, and these problems have gotten worse since. And it's like, well, but these are all problems that have gotten worse everywhere. And they're problems that are not driven by legality, or at least the fact that it's no longer criminal to possess heroin. It's driven by the fact that we had a horrible pandemic that traumatized people.

They lost loved ones. They lost jobs. They lost support. It's driven by the fact that the price of housing continues to rise. It's driven by inflation. It's driven by the fact that i mean to no small part everybody's got brain worms from social media that's not a zero percent factor in both people's anger at the houseless um and in the fact that people are falling through

the cracks like we have a million different things i don't mean to list that as a comprehensive list of our problems either like drug addiction and and drug deaths due to overdoses are caused by a variety of things. And one of the reasons why the death rate has been so high is that if you're addicted to heroin, you can't just stop doing heroin or the consequences are really, really horrible, worse than a lot of people are going to deal with. And so people keep using and they keep getting drugs that have been tainted with fentanyl. And it's hard not to die doing that. Like rich people can continue to test their kids. People who are, you know, have had the benefit of not just education, but a stable home

in which to do drugs and sort of the resources to know and to be able to like test their shit will test their shit. But most street level users don't have that kind of option. And it frustrates me that it's all getting scapegoated on this ballot measure. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about how they're attempting to go after 110, because it looks like right now the primary threat is legislative, in part because if they push another ballot measure, Oregonians get to vote and we'll see how they vote. But reversing it by almost a 10% lead is not an easy thing to do. And I kind of think Oregonians might surprise them in terms of not being willing to repeal this thing. Legislatively, we don't have really that kind of option against it. If they're able to get

a kind of enough people behind an essential repeal and they'll frame it as, you know, we're just trying to tinker with the law to make it work better. But if they can get enough people behind that, there's really nothing to do about it, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I, in my opinion, was a strategy on the part of the opponents of 110 was, I mean, they have some very wealthy financial backers. Yes. the opponents of 110 was, I mean, they have some very wealthy financial backers. Yes.

And so, you know, it is not cheap to do a ballot measure. And, you know, they know that they can use that money to do media buys and to spread all of the misinformation that they've been spreading thus far. And I think that, frankly, there are people in the legislature that don't want to recriminalize, but feel that it is the lesser of two evils. And the unfortunate thing is, is that what we are essentially doing is delivering them a watered down version of that ballot measure. And they were intentional in that ballot measure. I mean, they made it as bad as could be. It includes more than just recriminalization. You know, It includes what is commonly known as Lend Bias Law in federal courts, which is essentially that people who deliver a substance that causes an overdose can be

prosecuted essentially for murder. And it is an archaic understanding of how the distribution of drugs works or the testing of drugs works. And so they tried to make it as bad as possible in order for the legislature to essentially go, well, we don't want that to happen. And, you know, I would worry about a ballot measure. I mean, I agree with you that it's a big swing and I have faith in the voters of Oregon. But the fact is, is that the media has portrayed this very unfairly. You know, there was an article recently from the editorial board at the Oregonian, and they advocated for recriminalization. And in it, they cited that they want a data-driven approach. There was not a piece of data in that article. It was all based on misinformation. And the same is true. I mean, law enforcement are the worst about this.

You know, they're constantly saying, oh, well, we just want tools so that we can confiscate the drugs and so that we can refer people to treatment because we all know that's all police officers want to do. And yet when you look at the e-citations that came out of Measure 110, those were meant as to be a referral tool. And that was one of the big mistakes of 110 is trying to use police officers as an ambassador for treatment. There is a culture in the police community that treats drugs as crimes, right? You are a criminal if you are a drug user. And I'm not saying police are a monolith. I'm saying that is the culture that exists. And to expect them to change that overnight because the voters said they want to decriminalize was rather naive. And it's obvious because just here in Multnomah County,

I think in basically a 24-month period, they issued something like 900 e-citations, basically a 24-month period, they issued something like 900 e-citations. Or that was during a 30-month period, excuse me. And during a 24-month period in 2018 and 2019, they arrested more than 3,300 people on PCS. And that is, what, nearly three times, more than three times as many people when they were able to put handcuffs on the people that they were meeting with. And Multnomah County was actually better than the most. You look at Washington County, 71 e-citations. In 30 months, 71 tickets were given on this.

And the ticket was supposed to be the tool by which somebody is referred to treatment. And so, you know, in some ways, Measure 110 had some serious structural and implementation issues. But that doesn't mean that we just go back to what the voters said. And one of the things that was the biggest issue in implementation is that a lot of funds were supposed to be redirected, I think, from marijuana sales was one of the places, to treatment facilities and treatment options for people like these people who are supposed to be getting tickets instead of arrested for drug use, who are supposed to be being kind of pushed gently towards options. But the actual money for those options took more than a year to start arriving. And it is still not at a very good clip. And there's a number of reasons for this, but like when, when they frame it as like, we'll be decriminalized stuff and all these problems kept getting worse. It's like, well, for one thing,

they kept getting worse. They were getting worse when everything was illegal at a rapid pace. And number two, you didn't do what was supposed to be half of the measure, which was increasing the amount of care that people had access to. Yeah, absolutely.

And to hear people talk about it now, I mean, during a legislative committee, I think there was one representative or senator who said, well, why did it take so long for this to get implemented? It was 2020 and 2021. People are quickly forgetting how chaotic things were then. And the other thing is that when you put that money into the system, it takes a while to build beds, to hire people to do that. And what the opponents of 110 are doing, what the people seeking to recriminalize are doing, they're really preying on our collective impatience.

They're saying, oh, well, nobody is going and voluntarily engaging in treatment. Therefore, we must mandate it. And again, no one's voluntarily engaging in treatment because there's no treatment available to voluntarily engage in. And the idea that by making it criminal, we can somehow fix that is actually counterproductive

because we're taking all those funds that we could be putting into additional services, into outreach, and we're instead putting it back into law enforcement or into probation or into the jails or into the state lab to test these drugs. And I want to continue off of that. And I want to talk, bring out some more data too.

But first we have to go do a plug to ads. So here's ads, folks. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going.

That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the

Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. We're back, and I wanted to – I think there's two really good things to keep in mind when, as an Oregonian, you're arguing with friends and family about 110. Or if you're outside of the state and people bring it up because they saw like a three-minute piece on Fox News where some smarmy asshole talked to a guy on the street. You know, you should be aware of a couple of things. Number one, when people talk about how it's not working, the thing that you should bring

up is like, well, what about the 40 years or so of criminalization prior, like that led us to this point and at which the acceleration in deaths was highest. And the other thing to bring up is, well, there's these claims that like public disorder, drug use, all this stuff, overdose deaths have gotten worse since 110. There's no evidence that that's the case. Right. And there was, in fact, a study into this by New York University that found no evidence of an association between decriminalization and fatal overdose rates in Oregon and Washington. And I want to I want to read a couple of quotes from that study. So first off, quote, publicly available calls for service data were used to compare Portland's use of the 911 system to Boise, Idaho, Sacramento, California, and Seattle, Washington before and after 110.

This was between 2018 and 2022. Public initiated calls for service did not change after BM-110 was enacted in Portland. Portland's 911 calls for service data align with comparison cities for property disorderly and vice offenses with similar seasonally fluctuations. So for one thing, what you'll notice is that a lot of the articles about 110

started to hit both when we would have winter weather come in and summer weather come in. Both of those lead to surges in overdoses and drug use because the weather's shitty, right? People have less to do, less options. And especially if you're living outside, it's 100 during the day or it's 12.

Maybe you want to do drugs more because you're uncomfortable, right? Yeah. So again, I think that it's important. There's this study from New York University on 110 and its lack of impact on this stuff. That shouldn't be the final word on this. I'm certain there will be more studies. But that is a word on this. And they simply have no data on their side of things. You know, there's another study as well. I mean, you know, there's a study out of Portland State University and it's interesting. It was a follow-up study. The full report has

not been released yet, but they did release some of their key findings. And it was in the first year PSU met with officers and interviewed them about their perceptions of 110 and how it was going. As you might imagine, officers didn't think it was going well. And they said, oh, well, violent crime has increased and property crime has increased and overdoses are increased and all because of 110. And what this report found is that is not true. There was an uptick in property crime, but we cannot say that that has been a result of 110 for years. You need a lot of data in order to look at that. And so, you know, this idea, and I mean, the ultimate finding of that study was that it is too early to recriminalize it based on the data.

It is too early to recriminalize. And so, but again, you know, I think that instead what we are relying on is people's fear and what people see in the street. And, you know, I think it's also this idea. I mean, the reason we are having this discussion, in my opinion, is two things. One is public use, right? Individuals using the street, it's in people's faces. Nobody really cares when someone is in the warmth of their own home using fentanyl. It's when they're on the street. Or I should note when someone's in the White House using fentanyl, because it just came out that the president and high staff were prescribed fentanyl and ketamine in the White House when Trump was in office. So yeah, absolutely. But no one really cares about that.

It's when it's in your face that people care. And the other one is the perception that crime is, you know, that again, a lot of crime is caused by drug use, right? There is an underlying association there. But the idea of criminalizing drugs because of that is the idea that you can somehow arrest somebody, compel them into treatment, and therefore prevent crimes. Yeah. I mean, that's like the precog, the sci-fi sort of things. It is a backward system. No, and we actually know what will stop the drug-related crimes, which are mostly theft, right? And one of the things that will, and they've seen this, I believe it's the Netherlands, that if you're a heroin addict, the government will give you free heroin. You have to take it at a center like you go in, you sign a thing and you get your dose and you take it there. That saves them money based on doing nothing, because when they do nothing, people break

into houses and cars, et cetera, and boats because it's the Netherlands in order to steal shit so that they can not get dope sick. And just giving the dope to them winds up costing a lot less per addict. Well, the other thing that gets people clean or that stops people from committing crimes is housing, is providing them a roof over their head. I mean, when people are, even if they're not on the street, if they are housing unstable, they're trying to make a living. And it is not easy to do so with whether it's a felony record or

your, you know, your upbringing or whatever reason has held you back. If they have housing, I mean, there are numerous studies that show that when you put somebody in housing, their likelihood of using drugs drops, their likelihood of committing crimes drops. And yet we are focused on this recriminalization rather than trying to house these individuals. Yeah. And it's, you know, when you talk about this, when you talk about decriminalization and in Oregon's context, there's a good reason for this. People talk about Portugal, Portugal, Spain also did this, both Portugal and Spain. And I believe Portugal was first, decriminalized

simple possession and use quite a while ago. It's been that way in Portugal for, I think, like 20 years. They have a significant amount of data on it, right? And Oregonians, the people who were pushing for 110, cited it specifically as like a reason why this was worthwhile. There was recently, I think last year, some state officials and whatnot went to Portugal to look into the system. And so as a result, you've seen like attacks on the Portuguese drug system, including there was a recent Washington Post article about how Portugal's

starting to regret it. They're going to recriminalize maybe. And the reality of the situation is that there has been a recent surge in illicit drug use in Portugal from 7.8% in 2001 to 12.8% in 2022. That is an increase. It's still below the average in most of Western Europe. It's lower than France and Italy. I believe it's lower than the UK. It's lower than like most of Western Europe. And just kind of pointing out the fact that Portugal is also dealing with an increase

in drug use, again, saying that that's because of the culture of decriminalization seems silly when there have been corresponding surges everywhere where it's illegal. But beyond that, it ignores the fact that there have been really significant benefits that we do know are benefits of decriminalization because of how long we've been looking at it. From 2000 to 2008, prison populations in Portugal fell by almost 17%. Overdose rates dropped because in part they funded rehabilitation, which Oregon still has not really done. There was no surge in use. And in fact, less people seem to die when the system changed, right? What has increased is some drug-related debris. Particularly, most of the surges have been in the last, literally the last couple of years, which again, makes me think it is tied to the

global trends that have made a lot of people more miserable and living in a more difficult situation and at more risk of drug addiction. What happens in Portugal politically, hard to say, but overall, decriminalization, we have a lot of data for, seems to have largely been a success. And if that's kind of what we were to see in Oregon with decriminalization, I would be happy, even it seems like they have a good point, which is people shouldn't be people with families, but just regular people should not have to see folks using hard drugs on the street as they walk around town. And I agree. It is not reasonable to expect people to walk with their kids to school past somebody shooting up heroin or smoking crack.

It's it's fine. And not you're not you're not like a some sort of like nark or party pooper if you don't want your kids to see that. But that's already illegal because it's like it's illegal to drink a beer on the street in Portland. The problem is not that the cops can't do anything about it. It's that, again, they're choosing not to do anything about it. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, and again, it is the issue of we have people living on the streets, right? I mean, it is, I completely agree that people shouldn't have to walk past that, but maybe that is an opportunity to talk to their child about the need to make sure that people have

a safe place to live. And also, I mean, it's also, you know, if we had safe use locations, you wouldn't see nearly as much of that. And frankly, the system would have a better argument for punishing public use if we had safe use areas because we have put so many people on the street. Yes. Somebody who has no place to be and is desperate and is addicted, using in a place where you can see them is understandable. Somebody who has options for places to be and is choosing to do it in front of people, that's a bit of a different case. And again, I also want to just really, because I've encountered this in arguments about 110 with people, it did not make it legal to do drugs in public.

That remains illegal. It's illegal to drink a beer in public. Absolutely. Yeah. Public use is, I mean, but again, these are sort of the narratives that are being perpetuated by, and a lot of it is law enforcement. And honestly, my take on it is that law enforcement doesn't really care about recriminalizing possession. They don't. doesn't really care about recriminalizing possession. They don't. What they want is they want the ability to search people. What that gives them is it gives them the right to say, hey, I have probable cause to believe that you have drugs on you. Therefore, I'm going to search you. I'm going to search your car. I'm going to search your house, right? It gives them that ability. And many of them will be very forthright about that. And the biggest infringements on our personal privacy, on our

Fourth Amendment rights, on our protected privacy interests has always been drugs. It has always been the criminalization of drugs has eroded our privacy interests. And that's what's really at play here. Because I don't think the officers, I mean, and this is, again, not a monolith. I'm saying I don't think in general, law enforcement really is that concerned with, you know, getting individuals off the street and into treatment. If that were the case, we would have seen far more of those e-citations. Well, you know, we would see the officers doing, there is a statute that allows them to transport people to detox, right? We don't see that that often because really what is at issue here is the ability to search people based on probable

cause that they possess drugs. Yeah, yeah. And we will talk about what people can do if they want to stop the recriminalization of drugs in Oregon. But first, here's some more ads. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?

Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zetron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though.

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home

and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back.

So, Grant, kind of the question I am left with at the end of this here is what do we do to fight back against this? What is actually – what are the options people have? Obviously, the thing that first occurs to me that is most accessible is make a fuss to your elected leaders so you know that this is something you'll think about come voting season. But first off, how would people do that, I guess? Yeah, I mean, you know, figure out who your legislator is, you know, write to them, call them, let them know that, you know, you want to see, you know, realistic fixes to this. You want to see investment in public health, in outreach through peer navigators and case managers that you don't want to see us return to the same war on drugs that has failed. that has failed. Yeah, it's hard. I will say if you're looking to do research outside of like a lot of local news, this is a hard time for local news. Well, good local reporting gets done in a number of places, including Oregon. Also, a lot of smaller local news agencies are very much in

the pocket of the people who help to fund them, which is some of the people funding the attempt to repeal. So if one of the better articles that has been written recently was in the New Yorker. It's great. Yeah, there's a I'm pulling it up right now. There's a great New Yorker piece, A New Drug War in Oregon, that was published just this month, probably the best major outlet piece I've seen on it. And yeah, it's it's it talks a lot about the stabbing wagon, which is a kind of independent, although they now should at some point theoretically be getting a significant amount of funding, but they provide drug users not just with naloxone or Narcan, but with safe use materials like syringes and stuff that are clean. This is down in the south of Oregon in a place called Medford, which has both

one of Oregon's worst drug problems and also is a much more conservative area. So obviously these people are very controversial. And I will say one of the things this article does well is they get at, even within people who are supportive of 110, the conflict between kind of traditional addiction recovery resources and organizations. And some of these new, often these new organizations are either started by or run by people who have or do currently deal with addiction. And I think covering that conflict is valuable. There's some stuff that frustrates me about it. And this is, I think there's a lot of negativity towards Stab and Wagon and its founder that's unfair. I also think some of the things that she has said about traditional addiction recovery

resources are very unfair from her point of view. And I think when I look at the problem, the only comprehensive solution is multiple options for different kinds of people, because I know a lot of people who have dealt with addiction and recovered, and no two of them did it the same way. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, I think that both of those are necessary, same way. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, I think that, you know, both of those are necessary, right? Harm, what I always say is that the beauty of harm reduction is that not only does it ensure that somebody survives long enough to make it to recovery, but it also builds a relationship with that person. It builds a relationship of trust so that you can have a conversation about the need for recovery. You know, as a public defender, I don't get the benefit of the prosecutor or the court

to or probation to wield power and to make my client do what they should do because I'm holding power over them. I have to build trust, right? I have to have a relationship of trust with them. And I have to find out what motivates that individual and try to utilize that to encourage positive steps, right? And that's true of our case managers and social workers that work with us. And that's what the system doesn't have, right?

The system is just trying to use the threat of incarceration in order to get individuals who are not ready for recovery to engage in recovery. And that's detrimental. I mean, we need both harm reduction and we need traditional treatment. We need culturally competent treatment. You know, there needs to be wraparound services. And that's one of my concerns here is that, you know, we know that the criminal legal system didn't work. When 110 passed, we had a drug court that dealt with low level possession. And its graduation rate was around 17%. So 17% of people, and graduation meant 90 days of sobriety.

And that was 17% of people. That other 83%, if they fail at a program, again, the only tool the system has is jail. And so all they did was did not hook them up with services and instead eventually punish them for not being ready for treatment. And that is not how we get people into recovery. Yeah, I think that that's a really good point.

When I talk about both how people can help if a loved one is starting to deal with drug addiction and if someone you love is getting into a cult or getting pulled into conspiracy theories, it's actually the same advice. I had a friend come to me recently because a loved one of theirs was starting to kind of talk about some really concerning conspiracy theory stuff, right? And they were like, what do I say against this? How do I argue against it? And my answer was like, well, you don't really. You make it clear like, hey, I don't really believe this. I don't find this compelling, but like, you know, I love you and I'm always here to listen if you want to talk about this kind of stuff or you want to talk about whatever. And that is the same if someone's starting to get pulled into a cult or if they're dealing with drugs, because as you noted, if they have a pathway

out and they're not going to have to, it's not this kind of thing where you've been yelling at them and then they have to come to you with their head tail between their legs and like, I was wrong. I fucked up. That's a barrier. If like, well, this person cares about me and is always going to be like willing to, you know, talk with me like no matter what, well, then that's less of a barrier. Then you're not, you haven't built a wall that they have to get through. They can just come to you when they're like, I need help. Exactly. That's one of the issues, right, is that too many people, not just in Portland, but everywhere, see individuals on the street and assume the worst and see them as the other. They don't see them as part of the community.

And so they're more than fine with a system locking them up because of their addiction. And we all need to recognize that falling into that lifestyle, whether it is because of where you were raised, how you were raised, whether you got addicted to pills because your doctor prescribed them, there's a lot of reasons. Whether you had childhood trauma, there's a lot of reasons why people get an addiction. reasons why people get an addiction. And, you know, to simply assume that somebody, because they're addicted to drugs, is a criminal, a bad person, you know, it is making them the other. And it's so much easier to be punitive when you're just seeing that person as the other. Yeah. And I did want to note, if people are looking for resources online, both about 110 and how they can help in the fight to stop it from getting repealed,

you can go to HJRA, the Health Justice Recovery Alliance. They have, you can sign up to get information from them. They have community resources. They have like updates on what's going on. I think you can find through them a way to like automatically kind of send a form message to your elected leaders. So just Google Health Justice Recovery Alliance Oregon or Health Justice Recovery Alliance 110. And that will take you there. They've got a lot of stuff collected there, both resources if you're having arguments with people about this and information on how you can help at least try to do something. Yeah. And I will say also the ACLU has been very active in this as well. And, you know,

they have an action plan on their website that, you know, tells you some of the things that you can do in this. And, you know, like I said, I mean, I think obviously contacting your legislators, we haven't even started the legislation or the legislative session yet. And so there is still room to change this and to at least make it less bad, which, you know, it's these days, sometimes it feels like less bad is the goal that we need to strive for. It's harm reduction again. That's how I tend to look at the legislative side of things. Well, everybody, that. That's how I tend to look at the legislative side of things. Well, everybody, that's going to do it for us here at It Could Happen Here. Grant,

thank you so much. Should you have anything you wanted to plug or direct listeners towards before we roll out here? I mean, I think, again, it's just, you know, go to the ACLU website, go to HJRA's website, get involved. But more than just that, no matter what happens during this legislative session, you know, remember that all these folks on the street are people and they need assistance and, you know, and they need help and continue or consider, you know, contributing to a recovery organization or volunteering to go out into the community. You know, if you have lived experience with addiction, consider becoming a peer. It is so impactful to have individuals who have struggled with substance use go out in the community and engage individuals who are currently struggling with it.

And that is the best trust building. That is the best way to get people into recovery, not through handcuffs and jails. Thank you very much, Grant. I couldn't agree more. All right, everybody, that's it for us today. We'll be back tomorrow with more of it happening here. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com.

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