GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley won the majority of Vermont GOP primary votes on Super Tuesday — the only state Haley won against former President Donald Trump — with the vocal support of popular Vermont Republican Governor Phil Scott.
When not campaigning for Haley in the Green Mountain State, Governor Scott — an anti-Trump Republican — continued to address issues that affect Vermonters closer to home, including how the state — which has one of the highest rates of substance use in the country — is handling controlled substances.
As he mentioned in his 2024 State of the State speech, Scott has proposed to “update current law to make sure those selling and trafficking dangerous drugs are held accountable.”
Scott added: “We need to modernize our drug crimes to take into account new and deadly combinations of drugs” — a nod to the prevalence of fentanyl.
Scott recently commended the State of Oregon for passing a bill that recriminalizes the possession of small amounts of drugs. Oregon was the first state in the nation to pass a drug decriminalization law and the first to recriminalize drug possession. (Democratic Governor Tina Kotek is expected to sign the bill passed by the legislature.)
It takes courage to reverse course when something isn’t working, but it’s the right thing to do. As I’ve proposed to the Legislature, we can learn a lesson from Oregon, and moderate laws that have had unintended consequences when it comes to drug crime and public safety. https://t.co/jMo25SOqV2
— Governor Phil Scott (@GovPhilScott) March 2, 2024
Scott wrote of Oregon’s rollback of drug decriminalization: “It takes courage to reverse course when something isn’t working, but it’s the right thing to do.”
[Note: The original decriminalization of drugs bill, which was approved by Oregon voters in 2020, was intended to reallocate “hundreds of millions of dollars of marijuana tax revenues into drug treatment and harm reduction programs.” Alas, Oregon saw one of the largest spikes in overdose deaths in the nation after the law was enacted. Whether the law change contributed to the overdose surge is debatable.]