MEASURE 110
Charting a New Future
Oregon needed Measure 110.
Criminalizing people who use drugs has never kept Oregon communities safe (read our case for decriminalization). Instead, it has deepened harm, reinforced racial injustice, and pushed people further from care.
Measure 110 — passed by Oregon voters in 2020 — was a groundbreaking step toward healing. It decriminalized personal drug possession and invested in lifesaving services across the state, treating substance use as a public health issue.
Measure 110 was more than a policy.
It was a chance for Oregon to break with the past and build something better: a public health system that saw people not as problems to be punished, but as human beings deserving of dignity, connection, and care.
Though the law’s decriminalization provision was later repealed in 2024, the service infrastructure it funded remains — and its legacy continues to shape Oregon’s future.
Measure 110 Funds Community Care
Measure 110 directed hundreds of millions of dollars into community-rooted care — prioritizing services that met people where they were and addressed the real conditions driving substance use.
MEDICAL DETOX and withdrawal management
Outpatient and RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT
PEER SUPPORT and recovery mentorship
RECOVERY HOUSING, including
transitional, supported, stabilization, family recovery, and permanent housing programs
HARM REDUCTION like syringe exchange, naloxone distribution, safer use supplies, wound care kits, mobile outreach, and connection to services
WRAPAROUND CARE, including transportation to treatment appointments and meetings, ID replacement, childcare, and access to healthcare navigation
Culturally and LINGUISTICALLY SPECIFIC services
SUPPORTED EMPLOYMENT
and job training for people in recovery
These services continue to be delivered by organizations across the state.
Many of them are grassroots, peer-led, and culturally specific — ensuring that care reaches people in ways that are accessible, responsive, and grounded in trust.
Its impact?
In 2021, early Measure 110 grants deliver
$22.3 million
which keeps 70 substance use treatment providers open during COVID-19 and Oregon’s early fentanyl crisis.
In the first 9 months of funding, people receiving substance use treatment more than
doubles.
Through 2023, Measure 110 delivers an additional
$265 million
to 244 substance use treatment providers, which ensures that
>80,000 Oregonians
access critical recovery services, with over 2 million provider–client interactions.
By 2025, demand for Measure 110 funding has
grown exponentially
with $1.1 billion requested vs. $391 million available, indicating these services
are working.
Measure 110 made Oregon the first state in the nation to decriminalize personal drug possession while investing in a health-based approach to substance use.
From Groundbreaking Reform to Partial Rollback
Measure 110 redirected hundreds of millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenue toward expanding community-based care — funding services in every county through the creation of Behavioral Health Resource Networks (BHRNs). BHRNs provide low-barrier services like treatment, housing, peer support, and harm reduction in every Oregon county.
Instead of arrests and jail time, people were offered a citation and the opportunity to connect with treatment or support services.
In 2024, the Oregon Legislature passed HB 4002, rolling back a core element of Measure 110 by recriminalizing personal drug possession. What had been a Class E violation with a voluntary health screening is now once again a misdemeanor offense.
HB 4002 also created a county-optional deflection framework, intended to connect people in crisis to services while minimizing unnecessary law-enforcement involvement. Each county sets its own eligibility criteria and program design. Oregon now has a patchwork of approaches that makes it difficult to evaluate deflection’s overall effectiveness. Meanwhile, some jurisdictions have reportedly misused or redirected deflection funds toward traditional policing activities, which undermine the program’s intent.
What’s clear is that deflection’s success will depend on strong, sustained investment in SUD services so that every encounter becomes a genuine pathway to help.