Donna Pinaula and her husband 'Utah' could be presenting a cookery TV show for all their breezy enthusiasm as they show me the ingredients and utensils they keep stashed away in the shopping trolley they push around town. Except, that is, what they're cooking up is fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin and so devastating it has laid waste to towns and cities across the U.S.
The homeless addicts, their patient dog, Rock Star, and a human companion — who can barely stay upright, let alone speak — are standing on a corner of one of the busiest thoroughfares in downtown Portland, Oregon, but the endless stream of people on their way to work walk past them without comment. The couple show off their drugs: blue pills or 'blues' for her, which are a mix of fentanyl and some other ingredients they can't name; and a white 'rock' of pure fentanyl for him. They show me the pieces of silver foil on which they heat their drugs and the glass pipes they smoke it with — both provided, free of charge, by a local charity. It's been a good few hours since their last 'hit' and they're getting twitchy, so they're soon lighting up again. Donna and Utah make no attempt to hide their drug abuse, but, then, why should they? For this is Portland, a bastion of progressive values. Three years on, the policy, known as Measure 110, has proved to be disastrous. Even Utah, a 33-year-old former forklift truck driver who prefers to give the Mail only his 'street' name, freely admits he cannot understand what possessed his fellow Oregonians to support the move. Speaking of the policy's effect on drug use in the city, he says: 'It's made it worse. Don't get me wrong, it makes it better for me, but getting the police off our backs and giving us free pipes and foil to do our drugs is not going to get us off the streets.' And it appears that after nearly three years in which Portland's once attractive and vibrant downtown area has been turned into a tent-covered hellscape of soaring crime, endemic drug abuse and maniacal behaviour, the rest of the city has finally accepted that the decriminalisation experiment has spectacularly failed.