After three years in which its streets became a hellscape of open drug use, rocketing fatal overdoses and rampant crime, Oregon has learnt a painful lesson.
Portland led the way relaxing narcotics laws in a tide that swept America - then quickly bitterly regretted it. And now even addicts are begging for drugs to be made illegal.
Portland is the biggest city in a state where voters decided by a comfortable majority in November 2020 to become the first in the U.S. to decriminalise the possession of personal amounts of all hard drugs.