In 2020, Oregon voted to decriminalize the possession and use of almost all drugs. Now, addicts do hard drugs in the open, and a treatment hotline has so far cost taxpayers $7,000 per call, according to The Economist, putting the spending at $1.4 million.
The Associated Press reported Oregon was “awash in treatment funds after decriminalizing drugs,” adding the state has allocated $265 million to recovery centers. The funding came from taxes levied on the sale of marijuana. Sadly, the rollout of these funds has been slow, with only $184 million distributed as of May 26.
Despite this massive funding, The Economist reported that “…help seems hard to come by.” The overdose death rate in Oregon almost doubled since 2019, twice the national average.
The New York Times has reported on the horrid conditions on the streets of Portland, including needles and humans feces littering the streets, drug addicts using drugs at all times of the day, and violent addicts in tents beating other homeless people with baseball bats.
One program that has been particularly costly and unsuccessful is the treatment hotline. Meant to be a resource for addicts to call for help after receiving a citation for using drugs, The Economist found that in its first two years of existence, fewer than 200 people called the hotline, and fewer than 40 callers were interested in treatment. That put its cost to taxpayers at $7,000 per call.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
The same can be said about our preparedness sponsor, Prepper All-Naturals. Their long-term storage beef has a 25-year shelf life and is made with one ingredient: All-American Beef.
Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
