Mr. Kellen Russoniello:

Sure, and I would be happy to send those studies over as well so the Senator would have them. There have been at least two peer-reviewed studies that have found no association in overdose deaths with measure 110. To be sure, there has been an increase in overdose deaths in Oregon. What the research has found, though, is that the increase is not correlated with measure 110. What it is correlated with, primarily, is the introduction in 2019 of fentanyl into the west coast drugs supply. This can be seen in charts through the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, data which shows that from 2019, the overdose death rates in all of the states on the west coast have exploded as fentanyl has come to the west coast. Prior to 2019, from about 2012 to 2019, fentanyl was only on the east coast but, starting in 2019, it proliferated in the west coast drug supply and has now permeated it. All that is to say that fentanyl is the driver of overdose dates now, in the United States and in Oregon. The research shows that even though overdose deaths have increased, measure 110 is not associated with that increase.