Voters in Red and Blue States Repudiate Lenient Drug Policies

An electorate that has grown increasingly restive over flagrant drug use and public disorder sent a sharp message through the ballot box on Tuesday.

In state and local elections, voters approved tougher drug penalties and rejected measures to legalize recreational marijuana and psychedelics. San Francisco, one of the most progressive cities in the country, elected a mayor with no government experience who vowed to move aggressively against drug dealers.

The results are the latest indications that the American public, besieged by a deadly addiction crisis decades in the making, is growing weary of experiments with more permissive drug policies and their visible impact on residential neighborhoods and downtown businesses.

It is a sentiment that President-elect Donald J. Trump echoed on the campaign trail. “Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares, surrendered to the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged,” he said in one speech. “We are making the many suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few.”

The latest election results continue a trend seen across the country this year. In March, San Francisco voters approved proposals to screen welfare recipients for drug use and to expand police powers. New measures in cities and states across the country, such as Idaho, West Virginia and Philadelphia, clamped down on programs that distribute safe drug supplies, like sterile syringes, to prevent users from dying.

“The philosophy that the only people who matter in drug policy are people who use drugs, and the only thing that matters for them is just making sure they can continue using without overdosing, has been completely rejected,” said Keith Humphreys, a professor at Stanford who is an expert on drug policy and treatment.

That many of the get-tough initiatives have been unfurling in California, along with two other deep blue West Coast states, Washington and Oregon, is telling. All three have tried much-vaunted decriminalization and outreach efforts to grapple with the drug crisis, homelessness and mental illness. But all three states have recently been adjusting or reversing course.

San Francisco’s mayor-elect, Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has never held elected office, prevailed in part by vowing to crack down on the city’s open-air drug dealing. His proposals included expanding electronic monitoring of people arrested for dealing drugs.

Statewide, California voters approved lengthening prison sentences for selling drugs and charging those with repeat possession convictions with a felony rather than a misdemeanor. (The felony may be dismissed if the person completes court-ordered treatment.)

The new measure, Proposition 36, unwinds a 2014 law that had lowered penalties on some drug crimes. But nonpartisan advisory analysts for the legislature warned that Proposition 36 erases money saved from lowered incarceration rates that had been directed toward drug treatment and mental health budgets. In addition, they said, the new measure’s costs, resulting from longer imprisonments and mandated treatment, could balloon to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The backlash against drug use was evident even in measures involving drugs perceived as less dangerous.

Massachusetts voters turned aside a measure that would have made it the third state (along with Oregon and Colorado) to permit adults to possess and use small amounts of psychedelics.

Voters in South Dakota, North Dakota and Florida rejected measures to decriminalize adult marijuana use, pausing a legalization surge that had been marching across the country, where 24 states and the District of Columbia now permit recreational marijuana. The only state victory for legalizing its use was in Nebraska, where voters approved it for medical purposes.

A majority of Florida voters did support the legalization measure, but they did not reach the 60 percent mark required for authorization. Voters in three Texas cities, including Dallas, authorized the relaxing of city ordinances around small amounts of marijuana.

Kassandra Frederique, executor director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which has long pressed for decriminalization and access to treatment, said that before voters sign off on relaxed cannabis policies, they are demanding more answers.

“They want to know how it would change their lives, day to day. How will we regulate it to make sure it doesn’t affect health outcomes? How do we manage exposure to young people? What about advertisements and smoking ordinances? Are we increasing access to research?” she said. “And those are important questions to ask.”

Some marijuana legalization initiatives have been underwritten by large companies that stand to benefit, Ms. Frederique added. “Now there’s a deep mistrust of both the government and corporations,” she said. “And the success of ballot initiatives requires public trust.”

Mr. Humphreys of Stanford worries that the country is swinging back to a war-on-drugs approach. “It’s not an on-off switch but a set of dials: We need treatment. We need harm reduction as part of our policy. And we need to use police and the criminal justice system in a constructive and not in a strictly punitive way,” Mr. Humphreys said. “But for now, it’s going to be a challenge to ride this backlash.”