大象传媒

In 2020, the people of Portland, Oregon - a famed city of progressives and counterculture - voted to pass Measure 110, the USA鈥檚 boldest drug policy reform yet. It came after years of campaigning, and was aimed at inverting the thinking of the war on drugs.

Measure 110 decriminalised possession of all illicit substances, including heroin, methamphetamine and oxycodone. The campaigners accurately predicted that the new law would ease tensions around racial disparities within policing, but it also coincided with the spread of the deadly and addictive drug fentanyl, and a tidal wave of homelessness.

Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, and is now the drug of choice for nearly all heroin users. It鈥檚 also more deadly - activists and the police now regularly carry the opioid-blocking drug Narcan to treat people overdosing on the streets. Homelessness also continues to rise as the cheap and available fentanyl spreads, creating an epidemic on two fronts.

Local journalist Winston Ross explores the complex issues behind Portland鈥檚 fentanyl crisis, speaking across the political divide and to many of those in the eye of the storm.

Image: Portland police officer David Baer holds up a blue oxycodone pill and a small bag of fentanyl that he has confiscated on 7 February 2024 (Credit: Deborah Bloom/Reuters)