theantimedia | Oregon’s state legislature just reduced penalties for drug possession
in a bill also intended to reduce racial profiling by law enforcement
agencies.
H.B. 2355 passed
both the House and Senate last week and reduces possession of illegal
drugs to misdemeanors rather than felonies as long as the person in
possession does not have prior drug convictions. According to a press release issued on July 7 by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, the bill provides for “the
reduction of penalties for lower level drug offenders. The bill also
reduces the maximum penalty for Class A misdemeanors by one day to avoid
mandatory deportation for misdemeanants.”
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According to the text of
the bill, drugs like LSD, MDMA, cocaine, meth, oxycodone, and heroin
are essentially decriminalized in small amounts. Each drug listed is
accompanied by the following text, indicating possession is only a
felony if:
“(a) The person possesses a usable quantity of the controlled
substance and: (A) At the time of the possession, the person has a prior
felony conviction; (B) At the time of the possession, the person has
two or more prior convictions for unlawful possession of a usable
quantity of a controlled substance.”
The “misdemeanor” title applies for varying amounts of different
drugs. For example, the maximum allowable amount of acid is up to “40
units,” while individuals may have up to five MDMA pills or less than
one gram before their “offense” crosses the line into a felony. Less
than two grams of cocaine constitutes a misdemeanor.
As Rep. Mitch Greenlick, a Democrat representing Portland, told Portland-based health outlet the Lund Report:
“We’ve got to treat people, not put them in prison. It
would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having
diabetes… This is a chronic brain disorder and it needs to be treated
this way.”
“When you put people in prison and given them a felony conviction, you make it very hard for them to succeed,” he added.
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