This is a supplement to the 90 minute talk given by Jason Renaud to various organizations – 2020-2024
Updated November 2023
1787 – Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin develop ideals of public prisons as an alternative to corporal punishment. Rush shares their ideas with Jeremy Bentham who in 1791 promoted his “Panopticon” plan for a national prison system in the UK. This goes unbuilt but is greatly influential in the US and around the world.
1806 – Lewis & Clark arrive near Portland – and continue to the Pacific.
1820s – Temperance movement begins in the US
1840-1870 – The village of Portland begins to be populated by trappers and visited by sailors. Alcohol is the primary pastime.
1842 – Oregon Territory Jail in Oregon City.
1851 – Oregon State Penitentiary opens – first major effort by state government
1859 – Oregon becomes a state.
1861 – Oregon State Hospital opens – second major effort by state government
1860 – Use of morphine rapidly increases through both prescription and illegal use after the Civil War
1870-1880s – Availability of alcohol increases dramatically with the development of glass bottles for shipping, immigration of German brewery workers to the US, and quick inexpensive transportation via railroads.
1875-1880 – Carrie Nation leads temperance protests in dozens of cities protesting lax alcohol regulation by city governments.
1900-1920 – Two and three-story cast iron and brick buildings populate the area around the shipping wharves to service sailors. Taverns are on the ground floor, cheap sleeping quarters upstairs. We now call the remaining buildings “single room occupancy hotels.”
1914 – Oregon passed a drunk driving law, which seems to have gone unused until 1916.
1920s – Poor Farms proliferate throughout the West. Most populated Oregon counties have poor farms.
1919 – The 18th Amendment prohibiting the use, sale, possession, or manufacture of alcohol is passed. It lasted 13 years, and though successful at reducing harms of alcohol, alcoholism is not treated, the law is not enforced and organized crime takes over. 18th Amendment is repealed by the 21st Amendment.
Upon repeal, Oregon created the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to regulate alcohol.
Current Examples of Oregon State Alcohol Regulation
- Licensing of alcohol manufacturers, importers & exporters, shippers, warehouses, wholesalers and retailers
- Limits on alcohol sales hours & locations
- Limits on alcohol advertising
- Age of drinking limit
- Over-serving limits
- Quality and portion regulation
- Drunk driving laws – DUI courts
- Blood Alcohol Content measure
- Taxes on alcohol sales
In some states, cities and counties levy taxes or restrict alcohol sales locations.
Arrest Rate – comparing 1935 and 2017
- Population of Portland in 1935 was about 300,000
- 24,787 arrests / 8.26% of the population arrested
- Population of Portland in 2017 was about 647,805
- 19,730 arrests / 3.04% of the population arrested
1935 – Alcoholic Anonymous begins. Their Big Book was published in 1939.
1944 – City Drunk Tank has 18 deaths – public outcry commences. Both the District Attorney and Mayor produce Blue Ribbon Panel reports. Nothing changes.
1947 – Mayor leverages drunk tank deaths to get the Rocky Butte Jail built. Closed and demolished in 1983.
1936 – Rolla Harger invented the “Drunkometer” and the AMA agrees with the alcohol industry that .15% is an acceptable level of drunkenness for driving. This is lowered in the 1990s to .08%. Robert Borkenstein invented the Breathalyzer in 1953.
1951 – Antabuse first drug approved for treatment of alcoholism by the FDA.
1962 – Robinson v. California decided by the Supreme Court
1965 – Lyndon Johnson signs the Law Enforcement Assistance Act. They publish their Task Force Report on Drunkenness in 1967 which calls fot the end of city drunk tanks.
1968 – Powell v. Texas
Powell “was convicted, not for being a chronic alcoholic, but for being in public while drunk on a particular occasion.” Therefore, the statute did not criminalize the condition of alcoholism, but instead punished the defendant for his public behavior.
1968-1970s – cities are beginning to think about providing medical treatment for alcoholism and addiction but unwilling and unable to pay for it, or know what exactly to do.
1970 – Alcoholism Counseling and Recovery Program opens in Portland. It is the first alcoholism and addiction treatment program in Oregon to employ people in recovery from alcoholism and addiction as counselors.
1971 – Nixon declares a War on Drugs, which includes new Federal money for drug treatment to be managed by states. Portland mayor Neil Goldschmidt and Multnomah County Chair Don Clark get Federal funding to start medical detox which they site across the street from the Oak Street police department.
1971 – Oregon Bottle Bill starts, providing small income for thousands of alcoholics.
1977 – War on Drugs now a punchline, Federal dollars for treatment services are slashed causing professionals to flee and people in recovery to have access to treatment agency leadership for the first time.
1977 – Public Inebriate Project starts, today called the Homeless Alcohol and Drug Intervention Network. This program used sober housing as incentive for treatment participation and also created EMT outreach to bring sick alcoholics and addicts to safe indoor space – a sobering center.
1978 – Andy Raubeson and Don Clark start the Burnside Consortium which gets a contract to operate medical detox.
1984 – Don Clark creates Hooper Center, named after David Hooper, the last man to die in the police drunk tank.
1989 – David Eisen brings acudetox to Portland from the Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. Burnside Consortium becomes Central City Concern.
Major public alcoholism and addiction treatment providers in the 1980s – Project for Community Recovery (for African Americans), Chicano Concilio (for Hispanics), Portland Acupuncture Addiction Center, VA CARS program, NARA NW (for Native Americans), Harmony House, Stay Clean, Phoenix House.
Homeless service providers – Transition Projects, Salvation Army Harbor Light, Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Program
1980s – 1990s – Federal grants and eventually Medicaid stabilize treatment providers at poverty wages for workforce. Two ways of managing public and private costs associated with alcoholism – regulation and medical treatment become established.
See – From Asylum to Community – Mental Health Care in Oregon from the 1950s to 2000
1999-2002 – Multnomah County addiction and mental health service system redesign reduced service providers from five quadrants to one mental health provider – Cascadia.
2019 – Cost of “excessive drinking” in Oregon – $4.8 billion dollars. Oregon tax revenue on alcohol – $300 million. OHA launches a moral campaign against drinking in 2023. OLCC accused of corruption and sloth.
2020 – Central City Concern withdraws from Sobering Station & CHIERS contract and the City of Portland bungled the handoff to Multnomah County. As of January 2024 – Portland still doesn’t have a central sub acute detox. Perhaps the largest US city without a city detox.
2020 – Measure 110 passes eventually decriminalizing drug possession and drug use. Both drug possession and use immediately spikes in Oregon.
2020-2022 – in the face of COVID and the pandemic restrictions, the public treatment industry largely lays down and ceases to function. Tens of thousands of people in need of treatment do without. Twelve Step programs go online – and continue vigorously. Many many members of the alcoholism treatment workforce leave the industry for other work. By the end of 2023 CareOregon senior officials describe the period as a “total breakdown” of services and that the workforce will take a generation to rebuild.
2024 – Recall / Repair effort to Measure 110 launched by law enforcement and criminal justice activists.
Suggested Reading
Not-God, the History of Alcoholics Anonymous, by Ernie Kurtz