Portland State University researchers have released the final findings in a three-year project examining the impacts of multiple drug policy shifts including Measure 110 which decriminalized drug possession in Oregon. The report is released in the wake of a significant policy reversal: Oregon's House Bill 4002, enacted in 2024, re-criminalized possession as a misdemeanor and established a new system to refer individuals to treatment.
Associate Professors Kelsey Henderson and Christopher Campbell, along with Professor Brian Renauer, conducted the three-year project, supported by the National Institute of Justice. The study scrutinized trends in law enforcement, prosecution, sentencing and public safety outcomes, utilizing both state data and insights gathered from interviews with decision-makers.
"The goal of this final report was to pull together all of the major findings from the years prior, and focus on major system trends and public safety outcomes," Henderson said. "Additionally, we wanted to explore the ways in which state trends tend to mask how things might differ across urban and rural counties."
The Year One report examining arrest, search and seizure trends and police officer perceptions was released in 2023. The Year Two report released in 2024 explored the role of the criminal justice system in connecting people to drug treatment, and examined criminal justice metrics (arrests and drug court participation) in the context of treatment resources. The final installment, however, delves into the multifaceted impacts of broader criminal justice reforms on public health and safety. This includes assessing not only Measure 110, but also the 2013 Justice Reinvestment Act, which reduced mandatory minimum marijuana sentences and diverted more drug offenses to probation, and the 2017 House Bill 2355, which "defelonized" possession of Schedule 1 or 2 controlled substances to misdemeanors. Perhaps most notably, the researchers found little evidence that Measure 110 was responsible for rising crime or overdose deaths. Instead, their analysis points to the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread emergence of fentanyl as the primary drivers behind a surge in drug-related deaths.
"In the lead-up to HB 4002, many claimed that Measure 110 was responsible for rising crime and overdose deaths. However, our findings offer little to no support for those claims," Campbell said. "While the rollout of M110 had real problems, and trends varied somewhat by county, by 2023 most metrics in drug arrests, charges, and crime rates were all either declining or stable at relatively low rates. Meanwhile, drug-related deaths began climbing rapidly before M110, peaked in 2023 and were starting to recede, though remain high going into 2024. What we observed was far from a causal connection to M110, rather, we saw an unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and fentanyl on public health and safety outcomes."
Rising crime rates and drug-related deaths that were attributed to post-COVID changes like Measure 110, were actually a return to pre-COVID levels.
"Of all the events we examined, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the justice system the most, more so than any legislation. We observed COVID-19 pandemic impacts on arrests, charges, convictions, and probation and jail admissions," Renauer said. "That being said, the pandemic shifts provided a reset to a lot of the trends, which allowed us to examine how and why some numbers returned to a pre-pandemic level while others did not."
The 2017 "defelonization" policy led to a notable decrease in felony possession of controlled substance (PCS) charges, accompanied by a rise in misdemeanor PCS charges. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the implementation of Measure 110 in 2021, both felony and misdemeanor charges experienced a sharp decline. Misdemeanor PCS charges, which peaked at 600-700 per month statewide in 2019, leveled off to fewer than 200 per month by 2024.
Despite decreasing dismissal rates since the 2013 Justice Reinvestment Act, there was an unexpected sharp increase in conviction rates for drug possession charges post-Measure 110, rising from 35% to nearly 65%. This may stem from the types of charges being filed, likely involving larger quantities of substances. Drug court enrollments, however, stayed relatively stable during decriminalization despite expressed concerns that enrollments would be impacted.
"Defelonization had a clear impact on charging practices. As expected, felony charges dropped, and misdemeanor charges rose," Renauer said. "While overall this meant that people had less severe charges, we found that a similar number of defendants were still implicated in the system overall. Nevertheless, defelonization was one of the most visible and sustained shifts in how Oregon handled low-level drug cases, and it was widely supported by justice officials."
Ultimately, the report underscores "the importance of accessible behavioral health services, economic stability and social support in mitigating the impacts of substance use and enhancing public health and safety." The findings challenge simplified causal narratives around various drug policy shifts, and suggest that broad societal factors and multiple aspects of the legal system play a critical role that are often overlooked in complex issues.
The findings from this study offer suggestions for the implementation of deflection efforts across the state. State and county officials can use this study as a possible baseline to gauge the implementation of deflection compared to the defelonization era. Most importantly, success with deflection will not just depend on re-criminalization but on whether new treatment pathways are accessible, adequately resourced, and appropriately coordinated across agencies.
"As the state experiences yet another shift to reform drug laws, we have to keep in mind that the good intentions of the reforms can often fall prey to the convenience of practice. Deflection will only be as successful as we allow it to be," Campbell said. "Our findings show that policy change alone isn't enough. Unless deflection is backed by buy-in from all agencies involved in a meaningful effort to engage, then the good intentions of reform risk becoming symbolic rather than transformational."
