Lawmakers poised to give Oregon a strategy to prevent drug use, addiction, especially in young people

Walters organized a work group last year to discuss the issue that included behavioral health specialists, families, specialists working with children and a pediatrician, state Sen. Lisa Reynolds, D-Portland. They looked at funding, research and what other states, including Washington and Pennsylvania, are doing.

Walters and Democratic Rep. Tawna Sanchez of Portland championed the bill in the Legislature. It is up for a vote on Thursday in the Ways and Means health and human services subcommittee. If it passes, the Joint Ways and Means Committee, which Sanchez co-chairs, will vote whether to move it to the House and Senate.

The bill had unanimous support in House and Senate committees, and Gov. Tina Kotek supports it, Walters said.

Another proposal, House Bill 2929, is also up for a subcommittee vote on Thursday. It would define and expand the commission’s authority and require that it include prevention, treatment and recovery of people up to age 26 in its strategy. 

That bill is also likely to pass.

But a bill to add more high schools for students with severe substance abuse addictions is not likely to pass because of budgetary concerns.
 

Decade-long hiatus

Drug use and addiction prevention is a science, but the state has not applied that knowledge to educate students about the dangers of drugs as required by law, according to an investigation last year by The Lund Report with the University of Oregon’s Catalyst Journalism Project and Oregon Public Broadcasting. Data collected from public schools serving the bulk of Oregon students showed that most districts were not providing science-based tools to help young people avoid drug use.

The investigation noted that Oregon had a coordinated and science-based focus on preventing drug use and addiction until a decade ago. A division in the Department of Human Services, with certified experts from tribal and other communities, required counties to submit detailed prevention plans and worked closely with local substance use prevention providers to guide and monitor their efforts.

But the division was eliminated during a 2015 reorganization of the Oregon Health Authority under Lynne Saxton. The agency’s public health unit became responsible for prevention, but public health had a different approach and the program unraveled.

“There were a lot of changes across the board,” said Debby Jones, 20-year specialist in substance use prevention with Wasco County. 

The unraveling came as youth faced the lure of legal marijuana and easy access to deadly fentanyl pills that flooded the streets. Then the pandemic hit and routines were disrupted, forcing students to take classes online for months. 

“All of those things came down at the same time,” Jones said. “Now we're really trying to play catch-up.” 

The cost has been high.

Walters knows families who’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars paying for treatment for their children. She said they recovered but thousands of other children have not. 

Federal data from a 2023 survey show that drug overdoses were the leading cause of death among those 15 to 24 in Oregon. And the growth rate of deaths from 2018 to 2023 — 625% — was the highest in the country.

There are plenty of other data and rankings — including the latest Mental Health America report showing Oregon with the fourth highest youth addiction rate among states and Washington D.C. — and they all paint a picture of Oregon youth in crisis. 

The state has not prioritized young people, experts say.

“We treat youth like little adults,” Annaliese Dolph, director of the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission told The Lund Report. “It doesn’t work that way. We need youth-specific prevention, and we need youth-specific treatment.” 
 

Need to start young

Preventing drug use needs to start when people are young. 

Studies show that those who take drugs — or other substances — before age 15 are nearly seven times more likely to become addicted than those who wait until they’re 21. Researchers have also found that more than 90% of adults with an addiction problem started taking drugs in their youth. 

It’s also much more expensive to treat people — and help them recover — than focusing on prevention. Oregon will never have enough providers or residential beds to solve the problem, experts say.

Federal data shows that nearly 60% of Oregon teens who needed treatment in 2023 couldn’t get it. That rose to about 85% among those ages 18 to 25.

Jon Epstein, who lost his 18-year-old son Cal to a fentanyl pill in 2020, has pushed the state to focus on prevention ever since. 

“We have to get to the kids and the youth before they need treatment. Before they have a crisis, before they're in the river drowning,” Epstein said. “We need to pull people out, but we need to get them before they fall in the river.”

Epstein has urged lawmakers to adopt the bill, saying that the situation is urgent. 

“The state deeply lacks leadership, vision, planning, capacity, transparency and accountability in this area,” Epstein said in written testimony.
 

Bigger plans

Lawmakers had bigger plans for prevention at the start of the session, with two bills on the commission and another that aimed to give Oregon more “recovery” high schools that teach the usual subjects but cater to students with severe addiction problems and are focused on keeping them healthy.

As the session advanced, the bills changed. One of them was folded into House Bill 3321, which directs the commission to take an inventory of state resources, determine how they’re being used and whether they’re working, and conduct a fiscal accounting of money going to prevention as part of its mission to develop a state prevention strategy.

The third proposal, House Bill 2502, focused on expanding recovery high schools, which have been shown to increase graduation rates and decrease drug use and overdoses. 

Tony Vezina, executive director of 4D Recovery, a nonprofit that helps people in recovery, said the schools work because students are with their peers who understand them and they’re in an environment that’s focused on keeping them in recovery and off drugs for life.

The bill would give Oregon three more recovery high schools in line with a bill passed in 2023. It created the first three — in Portland, Lake Oswego and Salem. Lawmakers planned to approve nine schools in all, with three created each two-year budget cycle. 

Vezina said backers have submitted plans to the Oregon Department of Education for the next three. 

“ODE is reviewing those right now,” Vezina said. 

The same two lawmakers, Walters and Sanchez, also championed the recovery school bill. But Walters indicated to The Lund Report it won’t go through this session because of funding concerns. Advocates had asked for $3 million a year.

“It's just a really difficult time to be starting new things,” Walters said.  “I'm hoping when the economy turns around we can get back on track and open schools in rural areas and places where they may not have access to services.”

Walters expects lawmakers to at least provide the funding to keep the current three recovery schools going.

“I think educating our youth really is the basis of this work,” Walters said. “We want to create (something) like the new gold standard for everyone, with a standardized prevention education.” 

House Bill 3321 — and House Bill 2929 on the commission — would mark an important start, backers said. It would put the commission in charge of prevention and hold it accountable.

“We thought it was really important to make it clear that we're accountable for the plan and that we hold the state agencies accountable,” Dolph, the commission director, said. “If everyone's responsible, then no one's responsible.”