Oregon Decriminalized Heroin, Meth, Cocaine, MDMA, LSD And Straight Up Legalized Shrooms
(Oregon Live) - Oregon will become the first state in the country to legalize psilocybin Tuesday with the passage of Measure 109.
Measure 109 was passing by 56.12% Tuesday at 8:50 p.m. with 1,832,513 votes counted.
Multiple cities have decriminalized the substance, but Oregon will become the first to permit supervised use statewide if that majority holds.
The measure, backed by chief petitioners wife-and-husband Sheri and Thomas Eckert of Beaverton, will allow regulated use of psychedelic mushrooms in a therapeutic setting.
It creates a two-year period during which regulatory details will be worked out, including what qualifications are required of therapists overseeing its use.
Let's start with the shrooms first. And no, that is not the first time I've said that sentence. Marijuana decriminalization and legalization has become as run of the mill as your grandmother having a 15-year old Toyota Camry with 7,000 miles on it that she only drives on Sundays to go to Church and the grocery store. It's old hat. Psilocybin becoming even decriminalized was not something I anticipated having a ton of support any time soon. But Oregon, and Washington DC, had a different idea. Where the legalization of mushrooms is wildly different than marijuana, at least right now, is that there wont be recreational dispensaries popping up so you can fly into Portland, hit the Shroom Shop and then trek into the woods for a vacation like people have been doing with weed and Colorado for the better part of a decade now. However, that's where the other Measure that was passed in Oregon last night comes into play.
(Oregon Live) - Oregon made history Tuesday in the movement to reconsider the nation’s war on drugs by becoming the first state to decriminalize small amounts of heroin and other street drugs.
Voters overwhelmingly supported Measure 110, a coup for the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, the same criminal justice reform group that backed Oregon’s successful marijuana legalization effort in 2014.
Partial returns as of 11 p.m. Tuesday showed the measure winning 59% to 41%.
It reduces misdemeanor drug possession to a non-criminal violation on par with a traffic offense. People with small amounts of drugs including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, LSD, psilocybin, methadone and oxycodone will get a ticket and face a $100 fine or have the option of being screened for a substance abuse disorder.
Decriminalization does not mean Oregon just became Pacific Northwest Tijuana. All it means is that you will no longer face lengthy jail time for carrying or possessing personal use quantities of drugs. You'll get an option to either take a ticket and pay a fine OR be screened and treated as someone with an addiction. This all feels like a massive step in the right direction to end the War on Drugs, also known as the New York Knicks of wars: it costs a lot of money and still can't manage to win. All this news also might be a tiny, small, inch of a step towards the opening scene of LAYER CAKE, where Daniel Craig walks through a convenience store showing shelves stocked with every drug you can imagine. At least, a boy can dream.
