The War on Drugs catchphrase and campaign became ubiquitous in the early ‘70s when President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act into Law, declaring drug use “public enemy number one.”

But who really was the State’s “public enemy number one?

We share and feel the anger and hurt caused by this crisis and understand the urgency to do something. Anything.

However, we have to avoid resurrecting the war on drugs and other failed policies from the past. What we truly need are effective solutions based on research and real-world experience.

Chances are many readers have already encountered the chilling reach of the fentanyl crisis in headlines or witnessed its devastating consequences first-hand. But to truly understand how we got here, we need to take a closer look at the history of opioids in America.

Portland is often labeled as a cautionary tale of "woke/progressive" policies gone awry in the eyes of national and international media and political spheres. It seems we can’t make it more than a week without being inundated with think pieces on how to “save Portland.”