⁄Spotlight⁄ To the Test BY CHRISTEN McCURDY JOSH DAVIS HAS WORKED IN NIGHTLIFE most of his adult life. Davis, 49, opened Star Bar in Southeast Portland in 2010, having previously owned a bar in Seattle and having worked as a bar manager and bartender for years before that. It’s fair to say drug use is common in the industry, both for bar staff who may use stimulants to get through long shifts and for patrons — and Davis has seen the human cost firsthand. “In the ’90s, growing up in Seattle, I had a lot of friends overdose from heroin, and that was not something that I would like anybody else to go through,” the soft-spoken Davis tells Oregon Business. In recent years, the increase in fentanyl use — and attendant overdoses — became impossible for him to ignore. “The fentanyl deaths started to mount, and then it was suddenly introduced into cocaine, then people kind of on the periphery of this bar started to overdose, and we’d hear about it,” Davis says. The Legislature also passed House Bill 2395, which redefines “drug paraphernalia” to exclude single-use drug test strips, hypodermic needles or “any other item designed to prevent or reduce the potential harm associated with the use of controlled substances” — thus doing away with the prior penalty. As this issue went to press, the bill was on its way to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk; it will be effective as soon as it’s signed into law. The bill also makes it legal for a law enforcement officer, firefighters and emergency medical services providers to distribute and administer naloxone, an opioid agonist that can reverse overdose. “This acute, sudden overdose increase has really been traumatic and really concerning as a frontline physician taking care of people who overdose,” says Maxine Dexter (D-Portland), who is also a pulmonologist and critical-care physician. “This all came about because I have rushed in as a critical-care doctor to rooms where patients stopped breathing: They have had a cardiopulmonary arrest, meaning their heart has stopped or Josh Davis, owner of Star Bar Before this summer, the penalty for distributing fentanyl testing strips — which can help people determine whether other drugs are contaminated with it — was higher than the penalty for carrying most illegal drugs. A new law does away with that discrepancy. Davis says he heard about FentCheck — a nonprofit that makes and distributes fentanyl testing strips — through a friend who owns a retail store. He got in touch with the organization’s co-founder, Dean Shold, and started making the test strips available at the bar. They’re in a fish bowl on the bar counter, where customers can easily grab them without having to ask questions. As recently as last month, distributing such strips was illegal in Oregon. An Oregon law modeled on federal legislation from the 1970s classifies testing equipment as drug paraphernalia and issues a fine between $2,000 and $10,000 for possessing items in that category. Under Measure 110, which Oregon voters passed in 2020, possession of most controlled substances is a Class E civil violation punishable with a $100 fine. (The Legislature rolled back part of 110 this session, making it a misdemeanor to possess “a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of fentanyl” or five “user units”—that is, pills—of a drug that contains a detectable amount of fentanyl.) PHOTOS BY JASON E. KAPLAN 18
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==