Not satire. Just Oregon.
As 2026 kicks off, Oregon rolled out 282 new state laws covering everything from health care and consumer protections to deepfakes and marriage age reforms. Some of them actually make sense. Medical debt can’t hit your credit report. Workers get clearer pay stubs. Ticket bots are being cracked down on. The marriage age was finally raised to 18. Good. Long overdue.
And then there’s this.
Portland, Oregon is moving forward with banning gas-powered leaf blowers within city limits.
Yes, leaf blowers.
This is the same state that proudly legalized hard drugs not that long ago. Meth, heroin, fentanyl. That experiment went exactly how critics warned it would. Overdoses surged. Public drug use exploded. Homelessness worsened. After years of denial, the state quietly reversed course and recriminalized drugs once the damage was already done.
Oregon has also spent millions and millions fighting homelessness with very little to show for it. Camps still line sidewalks, parks, and freeway exits. Businesses close. Residents step over needles. Fires break out in encampments. Trust in leadership keeps dropping.
But in Portland, lawn equipment is finally being addressed.
To be clear, this leaf blower ban is a Portland policy, not a statewide Oregon law. But Portland has a habit of leading the way on ideas that don’t always stay contained within city limits, which is why people are paying attention.
To be fair, not all of the new laws are bad. Some are genuinely helpful. Medical debt protections matter. Deepfake laws matter. Raising the marriage age matters. That’s what makes this so frustrating.
Oregon doesn’t have a law problem. It has a priorities problem.
Big ideological experiments get rushed through. Reality hits. The state walks them back. Then symbolic rules take center stage so leaders can say they’re doing something.
Gas-powered leaf blowers didn’t cause the drug crisis. They didn’t create tent cities. They didn’t drain public resources. They didn’t make streets feel unsafe.
They just move leaves.
Loudly, sure. But effectively.
Yet somehow, in a state still struggling to clean up much bigger messes, this is what made the list.
Things that make you go hmm.
Not satire. Just Oregon.
