The key committee that has been reviewing Measure 110 and addiction in Oregon may introduce a bill that recriminalizes minor amounts of possession of illegal drugs.

The goal may be to make the charge a Class C misdemeanor, which is Oregon’s least serious crime classification. And there may be a way to avoid the charge by going into treatment.

At least, that’s what some leaks relayed by OPB say about the bills in the works for the committee led by state Rep. Jason Kropf, D-Bend, and state Sen. Kate Lieber, D-Portland.

We wondered what Gov. Tina Kotek thinks. We asked her office: Does Gov. Kotek believe minor amounts of drug possession should be recriminalized as one of the possible changes to Measure 110?

“She has not yet reviewed these proposals so we cannot comment on the details,” Elisabeth Shepard, the governor’s press secretary told us in an email. “That being said, the Governor has been outspoken on her support of a public use ban of controlled substances, the need to reduce barriers to prosecuting individuals who are selling controlled substances, and to increase access to behavioral health services. She has asked legislators to take on these issues through recommendations from the Portland Central City Task Force.”

Notably, the recommendations of the Portland Central City Task Force didn’t focus on recriminalization. Kotek’s office isn’t saying, though, that Kotek necessarily opposes recriminalization. She is saying she has not seen the proposal.

In contrast, some Republicans have clearly favored recriminalization.

“In the upcoming session, we have got to recriminalize dealing, possessing, and publicly using deadly drugs, give law enforcement the tools they need to provide accountability that will require treatment for addiction, and allow counties to address needs at the local level,” said state Sen. Tim Knopp of Bend, the Senate Republican leader. “Anything short of that would be failure.”

Knopp’s office also told us he favors making the charge of minor possession a Class A misdemeanor, to be more likely to compel people to seek treatment.

Measure 110 got right that Oregon needed to make more treatment available to more people. We have heard Kotek and Knopp say very much that same thing. It should be Oregon’s goal to make it as easy to get treatment as it is to get access to drugs.

But this session will be a failure if it does not correct a fundamental flaw in Measure 110. A person addicted to drugs will choose more drugs over treatment, more often than not. When the penalty for possession of drugs —even heroin or meth — is essentially nothing as it is under Measure 110, then we can expect that we will get little from investing millions more in treatment.