What to know about Oregon’s drug possession law
Oregon recriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs on Sept. 1, 2024, four years after voters decriminalized it.
- Marion County received $1.4 million in state funding for a new diversion program after the Oregon Legislature recriminalized drug possession.
- RESTORE Court served individuals with low-level property crimes who faced addiction issues. But the state recently told local officials to expect a reduced allocation in future years.
Marion County’s newest treatment court, which helped criminal offenders recover from drug addiction while they gave back to the community, will cease to function after a loss of state funding.
RESTORE Court, which stands for Restitution & Treatment On Route to Expungement, served individuals with low-level property crimes who face addiction. The court was created after the passage of House Bill 4002 recriminalized drug possession in Oregon and the Oregon Legislature allocated $20.7 million for the Oregon Behavioral Health Deflection Program.
The Criminal Justice Commission allocated those funds to counties to develop deflection programs to refer people into treatment rather than incarceration. But Marion County had already been running its Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, for nearly a decade.
County leaders decided to take the next step in addiction treatment and created RESTORE Court as the “next step” in deflection.
People who entered RESTORE Court would serve on community service work crews supervised by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. By completing the required hours, they “worked off” the restitution and earned money that went directly to victims.
Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson told the Statesman Journal in late August the participation numbers were “really encouraging” in the first year of the program. Nearly 50 people, the program capacity, were enrolled then. The program was expected to take about a year and a half to complete.
Marion County received a roughly $1.4 million grant in the first round of funding for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which went toward expanding LEAD and creating RESTORE Court. For the 2025-26 fiscal year, county officials were told to assume funding would continue at the same level for a biennium total of $2.9 million, according to a representative from the district attorney’s office.
After the passage of House Bill 3069 in 2025, which adjusted the formula for calculating the funding for the 2025-27 biennium, the justice commission told the district attorney’s office to estimate a reduced allocation of $2.6 million, the representative said. But the actual allocation came through at $1.9 million.
The district attorney’s office said in a Jan. 8 news release that enrollment is ceasing and that RESTORE Court will shut down, but that current participants will be able to complete the program.
“I am truly disappointed that our State could not see the value in an operational program that sought to get offenders the treatment they need while simultaneously making victims whole and helping our community in the process,” Clarkson said in the release.
Statewide, 2,674 people have been referred to deflection since Sept. 1, 2024, and 393 successfully completed their county’s program, as of Aug. 4. More than 1,000 never entered deflection after being referred, and nearly 900 have failed the programs.
The district attorney’s office criticized the justice commission’s allocation of funding according to population projections, rather than actual program success.
“Instead, more dollars were directed to counties who merely say that they will have the ability to serve larger numbers of participants in the future,” officials wrote in a news release. “The result is a disproportionate allocation that rewards counties for aspirational projections, while reducing support for established programs.”
Under HB 3069, funding is distributed based on “projections of potential populations served,” according to the law.
The funding allocation will be put toward the LEAD program, the district attorney’s office said.
“To fund imaginary programs that don’t yet even exist at the expense of an operational, ground-breaking, collaborative system is a missed opportunity,” Clarkson said.
Isabel Funk covers breaking news and public safety for the Statesman Journal. Funk can be reached at ifunk@statesmanjournal.com or on X at @isabeldfunk
