there was an article on the front page of HN recently about the flaws in the current drug policy in, if I'm not mistaken Portland. Basically, not throwing junkies in jail doesn't actually help them sober up if there isn't a proper plan in place, so they're stopping that approach in favor of a more strict approach where doing drugs in public is a crime.
Before you make assumptions about my person opinions, I'm very pro-legalization, I think prohibition of basically anything is very misguided. If I were in charge, everything, including heroin and fentanyl, would be legalized, taxed, and regulated.
The lack of affordable housing in Portland drives homelessness; and being homeless pushes people to use meth during the night to stay awake so they can protect themselves and fentanyl so they can feel joy while living in truly wretched conditions. Keeping people off the street by building affordable housing and preventing people from despairing avoids a raft of social ills.
That said, per your point decriminalization of possession and public intoxication, measure 110 was a poorly written law that should have decriminalized drugs after harm reduction, substance abuse clinics, and housing options were in place first. The current situation wasn't guaranteed to happen; unfortunately city and county leadership like to wear their pants on their head instead of actually getting work done. This was as much if not more of a failure of governance to execute as it was a failure of policy.
It wasn't so much about the flaws in the current drug policy in Portland, as flaws in implementation.
Portland planned to decriminalize a lot of things and put a bunch of other measures and support systems in place. COVID and other things hit, and all that got enacted was decriminalization with none of the guard rails or help mechanisms, with predictable outcomes.
Before you make assumptions about my person opinions, I'm very pro-legalization, I think prohibition of basically anything is very misguided. If I were in charge, everything, including heroin and fentanyl, would be legalized, taxed, and regulated.