Homelessness / Drug Addiction Crisis
—Toilet Takeover—
Political attitudes change in Oregon and California.
By Johann Peters (March 11, 2025)
The laissez faire attitude towards “Hyper-addictive” drugs like Fentanyl is going away, resulting with voters in major West Coast cities booting crusading prosecutors.
A December, 2024 Brookings Institute paper by Keith Humphreys says it all with its title; The rise and fall of Pacific Northwest drug policy reform 2020-2024.
The paper looks at how attitudes towards public safety and decriminalizing drugs have changed in four short years .
Humphrey’s writes,
“[Decriminalization] efforts initially curtailed police and criminal justice system involvement in the lives of people who use drugs and also those who sell them, reflecting a backlash against law enforcement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police officers in May 2020. The reforms were undergirded by beliefs and arguments that not only opposed those dominant during the “war on drugs” but also differed in many respects from traditional arguments supporting harm reduction and public health approaches to drugs. Advocates of this new approach hoped that the drug policy reforms they championed would be so clearly effective that they would serve as a model of promoting racial justice and public health for the rest of the nation.”
The paper basically documents how voters in major West Coast cities have abandoned the concept above. All of the West Coast’s crusading prosecutors elected in the Social Justice Summer of 2020 were either recalled or voted out for moderate candidates.
Voters got tired of the disorder from rampant addiction in our public spaces. Many of the lax drug laws and resulting programs have been repealed.
This change in attiude is good news, however, Cowlitz County has work to do to meet new public attitudes with dealing with the hyper-addicted.
Lake Sacajawea is in Longview, Washington. It’s a place often hailed as the crown jewel of Cowlitz County's park system. The public restroom at Lake Sacajawea, built two years ago with local and federal grant funding was designed to provide a modern, clean, safe and accessible space for all visitors. The new open format doors with private stalls was supposed to deter misuse. It features an automated magnetic lock system that secures the main doors at 8pm to 6am.
Across the country, public restrooms in parks, transit hubs and city centers are increasingly being misused — leading to closures, higher maintenance costs and fewer safe public spaces.
Lake Sacajawea is facing a growing crisis — the misuse and vandalism of its last public restroom by individuals struggling with drug addiction.
Individuals have found ways to bypass the public restroom safeguards by simply staying inside after 8pm, then controlling the doors. This allows certain people to commandeer the facility all night by controlling an emergency release button inside.
This loophole in the automated system has created a refuge for after-hours drug use and other illicit activities. The makeshift drug den results in squalor as evidenced by; destroyed toilets, dividers, drug debris, burns, graffiti along with food and wrappers left on baby changing stations — rendering them unsafe and unusable.
At Lake Sacajawea, the consequences are clear; what should be a welcoming public facility has instead put visitors — including children and pets — at risk.
Frustrated park maintenance workers will relay their stories when asked, but are ordered to not confront individuals caught committing crimes and misusing facilities. Park workers instead are required to call the police, who often are too busy responding to other calls related to the drug epidemic throughout Cowlitz County.
The two older public restrooms are spread out around the lake about every mile. These are multiple individual private “closet style” locking restrooms. The problem is with these seven other restrooms is a person will lock themselves in for hours using drugs to nod off or simply use it for a sleeping shelter. This resulted in the park shutting down all but one of the closet style facilities completely.
Of the seven closet-style restrooms, only one remains open to experience extensive and continuous vandalism.
The problem isn’t only isolated to the Lake Sacajawea public restroom area, but throughout the wider Cowlitz County park system. Older “closet style” restrooms are being closed in lieu of portables easily replaced when vandalised.
Major West Coast cities are abandoning laissez faire attitudes towards public safety and health. The legislature is on a path to reflect this.
Bob Ferguson was elected governor with the promise of hiring more police officers. Senate Bill 5060 will have the state Criminal Justice Training Commission develop and implement a grant program to help local and tribal governments hire law-enforcement officers. A $100 million appropriation from the state general fund would support the grant program. This bill recently passed the Senate Law & Justice Committee.
SB 5060 needs to pass so Longview Police have more personnel to protect our public bathrooms for the community to enjoy.
Lake Sacajawea is our central park. We pay for its upkeep and have the right to feel safe there. There is no right for certain individuals to abuse the bathrooms on the lake. It’s not fair and actually, quite rude.
Johann Peters lives in Cowlitz County. He serves on Cascade Party board of directors in position 3/6.
(Image: Johann Peters)
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