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Oregon abandoned its drug law. Then came the mass arrests

Last year, the state ended a trailblazing law decriminalizing possession. Drug users in some counties are now in and out of jail, without lawyers, struggling to get treatment

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. Andrew Cartwright of Medford police department’s livability unit detains a person who was sleeping under a bridge on 25 February.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. 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.

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