How accessible are drugs in Brookings?

Carter Westbrook, Lucas Skaggs, Anonymous student

April 3, 2024

Brookings, Oregon is a place of beauty. It has good sights and lots of beaches, but people in the state of Oregon have too much access to drugs. 

This is a problem because people get addicted and it takes over their life. Sometimes people being on drugs can get kicked out of their house, and end up on the streets. Eventually this will be a bigger problem than now. 

“The statistic of drug abuse is 1 in 5 people,” Lois Gillmore, the Assistant Regional Director of SAMHSA said. 

According to an Oregon Drug Control Update from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, the percentage of people that use drugs in Oregon is 12.63%. That number used to be 8.82%, and that’s a 3.81% increase in drug use. Oregon now ranked 34th in the most drugs used in the United States. 

That's because Oregon made a vote to decriminalize fentanyl, crack, acid, heroin, cocaine, oxycontin, promethazine, shrooms. “There are a lot of drugs in Brookings, and kids can get access to it easily,” said Ray Branion, a School Resource Officer. 

Measure 110 was passed in November of 2020 and has decriminalized drug use.  According to the Oregon General Election Abstract of Votes, “on November 3, 2020, 58% of Oregon voters decided that Measure 110 should pass.” 

The people of Oregon believe that drug addicts should get help through a health clinic instead of going to jail or getting in trouble. Measure 110 also helps pay all counties in Oregon to establish rehab clinics. Having clinics in all counties will help people with drug addictions recover.  

What is decriminalization

Decriminalization is when a criminal offense is still illegal, but whoever commits the crime won't be prosecuted. The people of the state of Oregon find it illegal to do drugs, just not for the people to be prosecuted.

ACLU Washington tells us the difference between the legalization and decriminalization.

The ACLU says these two terms are not synonyms, they are the definition of two like terms that explain decriminalization.  

Why do Oregonians believe in decriminalization?

“The argument for decriminalizing has been the same for a long time, which is that advocates say that we rely too much on the criminal justice system to deal with what they view as a public health issue, addiction” Zusha Elinson, a reporter from Wall Street Journal said.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA] created a cost-benefit analysis for substance abuse prevention. “The average cost for rehab in Oregon from cheapest to highest is estimated to be around 1.75k - 6k.” 

SAMHSA’s document states that the cost for treatment of drug abuse went up to $151.4 billion dollars and that the drug abuse is a lot worse than the other substance abuses. 

Oregonians think that decriminalization would help, but most drugs are legal now. If they were to make some of the drugs illegal again the drug problem wouldn't be as bad. If you were to go to school today, you could find drugs such as nicotine and weed vape pens really easy and that's only in schools. Imagine how easy you could find hard drugs out in the streets. 

In order to clean up the streets from drugs, We need to make some of these drugs illegal again and send the people to rehab that really need it. I know most people wouldn't go to rehab. if they could they would have went, but it is expensive. If the government were to pay for people to go to rehab they might do it. We also need to open more rehabilitation treatment centers so that the people don't have to travel as far to get help. 

Photo Credit: https://www.davisvanguard.org/2023/05/student-opinion-american-medication-shortages-and-accessibility/