The U.S. is mired in a years-long nightmare of record drug use and overdose deaths — killing well over 100,000 people a year and costing taxpayers in terms of crime, law enforcement, homelessness, and prison. Today, we look at a first of its kind experiment that tried to provide a unique solution. Oregon passed a law called Measure 110. It decriminalized the use of hard drugs— including fentanyl. What could go wrong? Well, the state found out. And after a tumultuous three years, they not only rescinded the law, but booted a soft on crime prosecutor in Portland. Today we head to Oregon to find out what this could say about national trends.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Parts of Portland, Oregon are notorious for public drug use and overdoses, harboring countless sad stories, and breeding crime.

Believe it or not, a few years ago, Oregon voters approved a first of its kind law, Measure 110, to decriminalize all hard drugs—including cocaine, meth, and opioids like heroin and fentanyl. The idea to shift the focus to treatment. But after three disastrous years— the Democrat-controlled state legislature reversed the law.

Sharyl (on-camera): The end of Oregon’s experiment with hard drugs signals a deeper change in voter sentiment—an apparent acknowledgement that so called soft on crime strategies have failed.

Voters also booted Mike Schmidt, the once-popular District Attorney in Multnomah County—Portland’s the county seat. Schmidt was among dozens of prosecutors around the U.S. accused of being ‘soft on crime’ originally elected with money from liberal billionaire George Soros.

Nathan Vasquez is the new DA in town. We recently caught up with him, his first week on the job.

Sharyl: What has happened to the crime rates or the crime statistics in this area over the past five, ten years?

Nathan Vasquez: Well, you know, it certainly had a dramatic spike. And that was in the, you know, 2022 to 2023 range. When we’re talking about our homicide rates, we went from averaging about 20 to 30 homicides in the city of Portland to over a hundred. So we saw some really dramatic increases.

Sharyl: Are there any digestible simple ways you can explain some of the changes that happened and what the net effect was?

Vasquez: Yeah, I mean, there was certainly a Defund the Police movement.

“Defund the Police” came to Portland after major protests in 2020 sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a black felon who died while a white police officer restrained him with a knee to the neck. The officer was convicted of murder.

Vasquez: There was really an outright campaign to discourage police from even coming here. And we saw dramatic drops in our numbers of law enforcement officers. We saw some dramatic changes around our drug laws. And those things combined with some others really affected kind of the day in, day out work in the criminal justice system.

Sharyl: I remember hearing as an outsider that here they had passed a law that legalized possession of heroin, all kinds of hard drugs.

Vasquez: This was brought from kind of an outside think tank group from the east coast. And it was an extreme idea that you know, had a significant impact upon our community.

Sharyl: Did a lot more people, do you think, begin carrying and using these hard drugs?

Vasquez: Well, we saw a few different things, and certainly that that was one of them. We saw people coming from outside of our state to be here for that purpose. And we saw, just sadly, skyrocketing rates of overdose deaths. We saw public use just explode in our city.

Overdose deaths in Oregon shot up from 696 in 2020 to more than 1800 in 2023.

Sharyl: This is a liberal or progressive community overall. Correct?

Vasquez: Very.

Sharyl: Do you think the community here favored trying these things, but as a whole have decided they didn’t work?

Vasquez: Yeah. It was packaged that, ‘Oh, it was gonna provide all this treatment and it was gonna do all these wonderful things.’ And, unfortunately it failed to deliver on those.

Aaron Schmautz heads up the Portland Police Association. He says the job of policing became exponentially harder in 2020.

Schmautz: I do think it’s important to say that it wasn’t just because of Measure 110. Fentanyl is a force multiplier. All of the economic kind of downturn and issues that came from 2020 led to a lot of just more people on the streets. All these things. And so, just at every level, white collar crime, property crime, insurance rates the downtown core have gone absolutely through the roof.

We also wanted to hear from some of the people suffering from drug addiction. For that, we went to Fora Health Treatment and Recovery in Portland, where it’s dinner time.

The head of the treatment center, Devarshi Bajpai, spoke with us about Measure 110.

Devarshi Bajpai : It implies that there’s societal approval for drug use, which I think is not what we want the message to be.

Yet he doesn’t see Measure 110 as a big factor in Portland’s problems.

Annie Otis says Measure 110 and its repeal did factor into her addiction and decision to get help.

Sharyl: Did the lax drug law that made it decriminalized to possess hard drugs, make a difference to you, and make it easier for you to use or more likely to use?

Annie Otis: Absolutely.

Sharyl: What was your thought process?

Otis: My thought process was that, I mean, it was really easy to keep doing what I was doing. I probably would’ve continued on the same path, you know, because there just wasn’t a lot of consequences for a while.

Sharyl: What’s your view on the change in the law?

Otis: Fentanyl should absolutely not be legal. It hurts people. It, there’s no, it’s a killer. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country. And no, it should absolutely not be legal.

Anthony Morris also says Measure 110 gave him a mindset that made it easier to use hard drugs.

Anthony Morris: At the time when drugs in here in Portland, Oregon were open, it made me think and feel that I can use more. It’s everywhere. It’s okay to use. So that made me in my mind to think, you know, ‘This is fine. Everybody’s doing it.’ And now that the laws are back to where it’s not legal, it makes me feel like it’s not okay because whatever the state does, I believe it makes people think that things are okay just like myself. So I honestly, I think it’s better that they don’t.

It may be too soon to know if there will be big changes in Portland now that hard drugs are illegal again— and there’s a tougher on crime prosecutor at the helm.

But Vasquez has seen at least one big difference.

Vasquez: Well, in 2016, when Trump was elected, we saw, you know, four days of riots here in Portland. There was fires, arsons, there was the whole gamut. So in this past November, I think everyone in the city was kind of holding their collective breath and, you know, getting ready to see what was gonna happen. And we prepared, we got ready.

Sharyl: So you did some very conscious messaging?

Vasquez: Oh yes. I was very active during that time. I went and visited every single roll call and I talked to every single police officer. I looked ‘em in the eye and said, we’re going in a different direction. We’re gonna do things differently.

Sharyl: And were there no protests?

Vasquez: There weren’t. It was shocking. I’ve tried to be very clear it is not gonna be tolerated.

Sharyl: When you look at the next four years, what would you consider a measure of success for you?

Vasquez: Well, definitely seeing our homicide rates come down, seeing public use of these hard drugs, see that change and to see, a dramatic drop in our overdose deaths. Those are all things that, you know, are very real examples of, you know, what I would like to see, as a whole, I want this community to feel safe.

Sharyl (on-camera): According to reports, billionaire George Soros spent at least $50 million to elect scores of “social justice” prosecutors across the country. At least 21 have since been recalled, replaced, or voted out.

Watch video here.