What are they smoking?
Far-left Albany Dems want all drugs — including deadly fentanyl — to be decriminalized in New York State, bizarrely comparing their pursuit to Oregon’s disastrous experiment that lawmakers rolled back this year.
Members of the New York Legislature’s socialist caucus this week trumpeted their joint policy platform for the 2024-2025 session, which highlighted backing legislation introduced by progressive lawmakers that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs and expunge prior misdemeanor drug convictions.
The radical pols touted in their policy note that the bills were “similar to the landmark legislation passed in Oregon” in 2020, known as Measure 110, which made possession of personal-use amounts hard narcotics punishable with a $100 ticket instead of jail time.
The bill also funneled marijuana tax revenue toward funding addiction recovery centers.
Yet three years after the bill went into effect, bipartisan lawmakers in the progressive state voted this month to recriminalize personal-use drug possession, potentially punishable now with up to six months in the clink.
The Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek has signaled she will sign the new legislation into law.
“Any state should look at what actually happened in Oregon and the disaster it was and not move in that direction,” Oregon Republican Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp told The Post.
“Liberal Democrats in Oregon voted to recriminalize drugs. That ought to tell [New York lawmakers] about how much of a failure it was,” Knopp said.
The reversal by Oregon lawmakers came after fierce backlash from outraged voters, who ripped the radical legislation as exacerbating soaring fatal drug overdoses in the state along with crime and homelessness.
Critics tore into New York Dems for ignoring the West Coast state’s cautionary tale.
“Decriminalizing drugs is not how we help those fighting addiction, reduce the number of overdose deaths, or build a path to recovery and treatment for people in need,” said Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay (R-Pulaksi).
“Unfortunately, New York Democrats won’t be happy until we completely erase any semblance of law and order — no matter how many innocent lives it costs.”
State Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) said she and other socialist lawmakers “fully support” the bills to decriminalize drugs in New York, but distanced the caucus’s connection by noting its members did not originate or write them.
She declined to comment on the lawmakers’ joint policy platform linking the bills to Oregon’s doomed experiment.
