Department of State Police
Headquarters

3565 Treistad Ave SE

Salem, OR 97317?9614

(503) 3786720

General Fax: (503) 363-5475
(503) 585-1452

    

Kate Brown, Governor

 

  

August 16, 2017

Mr. Jefferson B. Sessions IN
United States Attorney General

Dear Mr. Sessions ill:

I am in receipt of your July 24, 2017 letter to Oregon Governor Kate Brown, discussing Oregon?s
regulatory structure and enforcement of marijuana. Within the letter, you reference an Oregon
State Police report, titled, Baseline Evaluation of Cannabis Enforcement Priorities in Oregon.?
This referenced report, attributed to my agency, is not a published report and is regrettably
utilized to represent Oregon?s efforts and compliance surrounding marijuana enforcement.

The Oregon State Police (OSP) did initiate a marijuana baseline report in 2016, in an effort to
measure the enforcement and societal trends of a legalized market. It was designed to be a
living document and the agency had no immediate plans to publish until objective data could
be recovered for many years.

The report was intended to provide a baseline to assist in later measure of legalization efforts.
For example, Oregon only began testing for cannabinoids in every vehicular fatality
investigation on May 1, 2017, in addition to the testing for alcohol. This is obviously important
to establishing marijuana?s impact on Oregon?s fatal crashes, as we have no definitive data to
compare in previous years. Upon examination of early drafts, it was clear the report was in its
infancy stage and objective data would be required to supplant many of the subjective or
invalidated sources.

On March 18, 2017, a large news publication in Oregon ran a story on the report.
Unfortunately, the first and least defensible draft of the report was leaked to the publication
and it was sourced in the article. The agency attempted to make clear the document was not
accurate, not validated, outdated and the Oregon State Police did not endorse the conclusions
in the draft baseline report. Unfortunately, you sourced the same leaked draft document as
evidence against Oregon?s marijuana regulatory structure.

The Oregon State Police employs detectives on most of Oregon?s cooperative drug enforcement
teams, often leading inter-agency efforts in rural parts of our state. We were fortunate this
legislative session, with the support of Governor Kate Brown, to add drug enforcement
investigation positions- most of which are specifically dedicated to marijuana enforcement.
These positions will be strategically placed to cooperatively support Oregon drug enforcement
efforts, suppress organized crime and to aggressively maintain compliance with the
Department of Justice Cole Memorandum.



Travis Hampton Superintendent