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Last week, Portland police arrested a man they say was dealing methamphetamine and fentanyl on a downtown corner. But the crime prosecutors charged him with had nothing to do with illicit drugs. Instead, they charged him with a different felony: practicing medicine without a license.
On June 14, 2023, Officer Eli Arnold watched 31-year-old John Baker Jr. pull up to the corner of Southwest 9th Avenue and Washington Street and pull out a bag containing meth. “People milling about approached him eagerly in a manner consistent with street drug transactions,” noted a probable cause affidavit later filed by prosecutors.
But when Arnold arrested Baker, he had only 2.1 grams of meth—and no cash. “At Baker’s foot was a single fentanyl pill that had likely been dropped by Baker” upon seeing the officer, wrote deputy district attorney Eric Pickard. “Two blue pills which tested presumptive positive for fentanyl were also recovered. Both pills were stamped with the letter M in an attempt to falsely portray the pills as legitimate medication.”
This isn’t the first time Multnomah County prosecutors have used unconventional charges against downtown drug dealers. Beginning this year, they’ve started levying Trademark Counterfeiting Charges against dealers selling “blues,” the fentanyl pills stamped to look like legitimate OxyContin manufactured by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
Portland’s Mayor Wants to Outlaw Public Hard Drug Use
Portland police are also responding to an increase in deadly fentanyl overdoses. Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office confirmed that he is now considering outlawing hard drug use in public and introducing criminal penalties, something many Portlanders have been asking for.
“Yeah, they need to go to jail or rehab, either way, they have to, ’cause they’re going to die,” said one man who works downtown and sees the crisis every day.