Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank Ms Wilson. I will quickly address Mr. Russoniello. I visited Portland, Oregon, and met some of his colleagues early on. It definitely was not given enough time. Mr. Russoniello mentioned this in his statement but at the time, the funding to increase service provision was not introduced at the same time as the measure was passed. It also seemed that a specific area of downtown Portland saw open-air drug use. Under a model where people are not decriminalised, would I be right in saying that population was mostly institutionalised? It is not that you have new drug users but you have drug users behind closed doors, in different institutions or in prisons. What is happening is that we are having to face the realities of people's lives instead of moving them out of our sight.

What are two other measures that could have helped in that situation besides housing and access to funding in a more appropriate manner? Am I right to say that the police were defunded at a local level around the same time, so there was not much of a police presence? Did the defunding of the police have any impact on the measure at the time? Are there safe consumption sites in Portland? Was anything like that introduced so the population that experiences homelessness or institutionalisation had somewhere to go should they wish to use in more of a care setting?