Mr. Kellen Russoniello:

Oregon does not have any supervised consumption facilities or overdose prevention centres, unfortunately. This was one of the things for which we had advocated as a partial solution to concerns about public use. It fell on deaf ears, unfortunately, so Oregon does not have overdose prevention centres. It does not appear that there is a willingness to move in that direction anytime soon.

Another thing that would have been helpful would have been more access to sobering centres or places to take people who were found to be intoxicated on the street. Portland used to have those types of facilities but for the past several years it has not had many of them. To the extent it has had them, they have not been available to the capacity needed to respond to the number of people on the street who need those services. Measure 110 is funding some of those services but as I mentioned, there was a delay in getting that funding out. Of course, once the funding does get out, it takes time to hire staff, get the buildings and ensure those services are available. We feel that having those types of services, places to take people when they are in crisis or where they can use drugs under a roof, would have been extremely helpful in this situation.

As for the question on defunding the police, I have not looked at the Portland police agency's budget. I know there have been some staffing issues that predated the defund the police protests that were going on in 2020. I do not even know if any defunding occurred. We know that the police have shown resistance to measure 110 since its passing instead of focusing on the tools they have. They have the ability, as they had during measure 110, to take anybody found to be intoxicated on the street to a treatment facility or if no treatment facility is available, to take them to jail. Police did not use the tool and instead just threw up their hands and said that measure 110 took away all of their tools to respond to people who were intoxicated or who were using drugs. That was not a true statement.

Unlike the system in British Columbia, possession did remain unlawful in Oregon. It was a violation and police had the authority to write a citation and to seize drugs if they thought it was the right thing to do in a situation. Unfortunately, the police did not take this tool seriously and instead, for the most part, decided to focus on saying their hands were tied and they could do nothing in those types of situations.