This Is the Pacific Northwest on Drugs

Decriminalization caused major rises in crime in both Oregon and Washington state.

A new study finds that Oregon’s and Washington state’s experiments with decriminalizing drug possession caused a surge in serious violent and property crime, especially in Portland and Seattle.

A police officer holds a vial of meth found in downtown Portland, Oregon, Jan. 25, 2024.

The paper, a collaboration among five criminologists, is the first to demonstrate that the states’ reforms—since undone by their legislatures amid massive public backlash—increased crime relative to the rest of the country. Prior research played down the phenomenon, allowing defenders of decriminalization to pretend the issue wasn’t real.

The July paper adds to the growing evidence that America’s experiments with drug decriminalization have proved disastrous. In particular, the research highlights how decriminalization concentrated crime and disorder in Seattle and Portland, rendering parts of the two already troubled cities almost unlivable. It also counters drug liberalizers’ argument that public-safety issues around drugs stem from the substances’ criminalization—rather than from the drugs themselves.

In 2020, Oregon and Washington took steps to decriminalize drug possession—the former by ballot initiative and the latter by state supreme-court ruling. To estimate the effects of these changes, the paper’s authors compare the states with 23 others. They use roughly three years of data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a crime-data collection system managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The authors also use modern econometric methods that allow them to discern decriminalization’s effects more precisely than prior research did.

The results are startling. In both states, the authors find statistically significant increases in total violent crime, murder, robbery, aggravated assault, total property crime, burglary and motor-vehicle theft. Their results are equivalent to a roughly 14% increase in the daily violent-crime rate in both states. Daily property crimes rose by 21% in Washington and 9% in Oregon. Several “robustness” checks indicate the effects aren’t statistical flukes.

These results are probably unsurprising to residents, whose objections to the results of decriminalization helped drive repeal. When I visited Portland in 2023, large portions of the city had been taken over by open-air drug markets. People used drugs openly on public sidewalks, including in front of police officers. It makes sense that such concentrated disorder and dysfunction resulted in a surge in crime.

Crime wasn’t the only thing that increased—overdose deaths did too. Research from the University of Toronto’s Noah Spencer, published in the Journal of Health Economics, finds decriminalization significantly increased overdose deaths in Oregon. He also finds a significant increase in deaths in Washington, though he considers these findings more tentative given the much shorter period in which the state decriminalized.

Drug decriminalization increased crime, overdose deaths and visible disorder. Perhaps that’s why both Portland and Seattle saw population growth slow, or even reverse, following decriminalization.

Drug-liberalization advocates have tried to play down the failures of decriminalization. They’ve blamed the emergent problems on the pandemic, and the Drug Policy Alliance has labeled criticisms as “an intense disinformation campaign by drug war defenders.”

These advocates insist that decriminalization is an evidence-based, science-backed approach, but the science isn’t on their side. America has tried drug decriminalization, and the results are in: more crime, more disorder, more death. Next time radicals try to bring it to the ballot box, voters should remember how it went.

Mr. Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior editor of City Journal.