Hi everybody, Cheryl Atkinson here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours. Today, we are off to Portland, Oregon for my story, Hard Drugs, Soft on Crime.

Oregon is attempting a big turnaround after voters approved a controversial law a couple of years back that, believe it or not, legalized, hard drugs including heroin, fittinol, opioids, other hard drugs.

Today on this podcast, I'm going to speak with

Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez, that's in the Portland area. I sat down with him

his first week on the job. Such a fascinating case because after they tried that experiment

with the hard drugs for a couple of years it just proved to be disastrous

and even in very very ultra-liberal Portland, Oregon and Oregon at large, the legislature decided to

rescind that controversial law and do a big turnaround, try to dial things back. A lot of other things happen about the same time they legalized or allowed the use of these hard

drugs. There was also an explosion in homelessness, which in many places like Oregon coincided with

the fentanyl opening up at the southern border, so much fentanyl coming in and so many drug

overdoses, so much mental illness. They also did a big defund the police movement in Oregon

during this time period. So all of these things together dovetailed to greatly increase crime

and other problems, resulting in voters, voting out the

supposedly soft-on-crime George Soros-funded prosecutor that had been there for a couple of years

and voting in Nathan Vasquez. And I think you're going to find this conversation with him fascinating.

This is your first week on the job?

First week on the job is the Multlima County District Attorney.

In just, we'll dig in in a moment.

But if you can in just a paragraph, what would you say, if people aren't familiar with Portland,

is the story of Portland, like where you are now in terms of the criminal justice system and what's been happening?

Again, I'll ask some specific questions, but how would you tell it on the book flap of a book about it?

Portland has been through an immense upheaval in the last, you know, four to ten years. You know, we started seeing

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