Oregon is RE-criminalizing hard drugs. They tried DE-criminalizing it several years ago, and ended up with a bunch of people like you committing various crimes. Normally, that's welcome in places like Oregon, but apparently this was bad for the tourist trade.
The state did this with alcohol. Most think that the goal of Prohibition was to reduce the number of alcohol deaths, since to this day alcohol kills more people than any other drug, not even close. However, it was not.
Essentially those in Congress wanted a federal income tax that was struck down as Unconstitutional by SCOTUS at the turn of the 20th century, so they simply decided to add it. But how? They teamed up with evangelicals who were appalled at the ravages of alcoholism at that time, worse than it is today, so they agreed to support the Federal income tax if the Progressives would support Prohibition. For you see, the US Federal government was funded mostly by alcohol sales, so doing away with alcohol would require a new source of Federal revenue.
So, they both passed the Federal Income tax amendment and then Prohibition, but there was never any real resolve to make Prohibition work. Sure they made some arrests but the same Congressmen that outlawed alcohol had bootleggers come to the very steps of the Capital to sell alcohol to them. They basically let Prohibition "fail", shrugged their shoulders, and said it cannot be done. Then they quietly renewed alcohol sales that continues to fund the Federal government.
The Federal government essentialy doubled their tax revenue with these schemes.
Not only that, the US federal government now directly sells alcohol to the public, alcohol that kills more people every year than any other drug.
This is what you are dealing with.
www.nbcnews.com
