Oregon Admits Decriminalizing Drugs Didn’t Work

BUCK: The dominoes of reality are falling all across the country, as we were just discussing. You want to deal with violence, gun violence, all violence? You want to deal with crime? Look at where it’s happening, look at who’s in charge, look at what the ideology is behind their decisions and why it’s failing. I wasn’t even looking for this one, Clay, but it just popped up on the screen. We were talking about Seattle yesterday where they can’t even assign detectives to new sexual assault and rape cases.

I mean, it’s horrific to even think about this, right? I mean, such a heinous, serious crime. Can’t even assign detectives, ’cause they don’t have the resources. They don’t have the manpower. So, you’re in a queue waiting for the detective to actually be assigned to you. And Oregon. As of today, Oregon has admitted that its drug decriminalization program is a massive failure. Overdoses…

Remember, it was supposed to be, “Oh, people, if we just give them needles and we don’t arrest anybody they’re not gonna be…” Overdoses are up 700%, Clay, since they instituted their decriminalization program in downtown. And it’s decriminalization across the board: People camping out on the streets, open-air urination, doing drugs, selling drugs, whatever. Now it’s just misery, property values dropping, more assaults, more crime, more theft more people dying. Nice work, libs! I mean, this is what they’re doing.

CLAY: Probably the least-covered story that should be massively covered is the extraordinary increase we’ve seen in drug overdose deaths since covid because it’s not a shock to many people out there, but when you took people away from their social safety nets, when you took ’em away from church, when you took ’em away from their groups where they could go and discuss challenges that they may have of a drug-related nature, over a hundred thousand people — most of them young, right, twenties, thirties, and forties relatively speaking died — in the last year with fentanyl. And it’s the likes of which we haven’t seen since the crack cocaine epidemic.

BUCK: It’s actually much worse in terms of numbers. It’s actually much worse in terms of overall numbers of deaths.

CLAY: And I don’t know how it is going to get resolved, but it’s obviously the open border is tying in with that, the covid mess. It’s a toxic stew and cocktail that has created this scenario.