14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

https://mic.com/articles/120403/14-years-after-decriminalizing-drugs-one-chart-shows-why-portugal-s-experiment-has-worked

by cirrus-clouds • 9 years ago

416 127 9 years ago

mic.com

11thEarlOfMar• 9 years ago

It would be illustrative to see a control of some type, perhaps deaths due to alcoholism. Seeing that trend against the heroin trend would help to illustrate the impact of decriminalization relative to other efforts or changes in law or society.

rwmj• 9 years ago

I would want the "drug deaths due to overdose" to include alcohol-related overdoses (although it's arguable whether that would include deaths due to alcoholism). Unfortunately I don't think even these enlightened reports do that :-(

vivekd2• 9 years ago

Counterpoint, overdoes deaths increased during some years and drug use has markedly increased:

Also the chart supporting less overdose deaths seems to be actually a chart about all drug induced deaths, and not just overdose deaths, which means it could include HIV/AIDS, once a big killer of heroin users which we can now treat for much better.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/10/portugal-decrimin...

pdpi2• 9 years ago

it could include HIV/AIDS, once a big killer of heroin users which we can now treat for much better.

If it does, that still supports this theory.

My father in law is a leading portuguese HIV expert, and he credits decreminalisation as a key factor in actually getting those patients into clinics and on treatment.

vivekd2• 9 years ago

I didn't mean we can treat for AIDS better with legalization, I mean we can treat for AIDS better because of improved and more accessible AIDS treatments that have emerged in the last decade and a half

tompazourek• 9 years ago

When I saw the chart I thought, what's wrong with Estonia?

jacquesm2• 9 years ago

All the Nordics have large problems with drug addiction. They are also tracking them quite well so don't compare them to let's say Romania or Bulgaria where tracking is next to non-existent.

monksy3• 9 years ago

Romania did better than Portugal. What are they doing better than Portugal? Why is Portugal's liberal policy on drugs heralded so great when it's not the best of the list?

(I'm not saying that it's a bad policy but why is the article focused on pushing that policy?)

Also what I want to see: What about Portugal makes it work? Could you test that assertion against a different country if you made the contextual changes and the change there?

jpatokal• 9 years ago

Not coincidentally, all the Nordics also take a hardcore prohibitionist line to drugs.

sumedh• 9 years ago

All the Nordics have large problems with drug addiction.

Why is that?

gok• 9 years ago

Estonia would make more sense in North America; its overdose rate is right in line with Canada and the US (around 100 and 150 overdose deaths per million people respectively)

taneltanel• 9 years ago

In Estonia, the police started to act tough on heroin dealers and users. This resulted in dealers and users switching to fentanyl, which is more potent and therefore, more deadly. Heroin is not available any more in Estonia. Fentanyl seems to come from neighbouring Russia, but I'm not sure about that: police keeps reporting about drug busts, but there is very little scientific information available about it. Mostly it's war on drugs propaganda.

The majority of Estonian population view drug users as someone who deserves to die, because of their poor choices. It's hard to get help or any compassion when you're an IV drug user.

Attempts to create needle exchanges are met with fierce resistance from neighbours. There are methadone programs but it's tiny compared to the amount of fentanyl users.

Up to 7.5 grams cannabis is not an criminal offense and smoking weed is quite popular with the younger generation. However, in Estonia it's not uncommon to hear from police that every weed smoker will surely start using fentanyl. Soft and hard drugs are treated the same in state propaganda, which results in many young people not believing that fentanyl is dangerous: since they were lied about weed, how can they trust warnings about hard drugs?

Estonia has also a huge alcohol problem. I believe many hard drug users started using because they were drunk in the first place. Alcoholism leads to violence at homes, murders, horrible car accidents, risky behaviours like trying hard drugs and having unprotected sex - you see, Estonia has a HIV epidemic as well.

drefgert• 9 years ago

The critical part missing from portugals policy is that drugs must be legal to buy and sell (via controlled channels).

Decriminalizing use helps, but legalizing sales take out the crime and ensures the health of users through clean product.

gozur88• 9 years ago

I agree with this. Legalization, with regulation, is a workable system. Decriminalization engenders disrespect for the law - there are too many inconsistencies.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

I actually expect the inconsistencies to increase. The legalization (restricted to cannabis) is being introduced as two separate law proposals, for medicinal and recreational uses, so you might end up with just the former, and all it implies in terms of regulation.

cpncrunch6• 9 years ago

Even with clean heroin, there is still a danger from overdose.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...

You could perhaps consider it as a Darwin award...sell heroin to anyone who wants it, and then if they become addicted and overdose, at least it clears the gene pool of people who are too dumb to use it responsibly. /s

Note, that is not my viewpoint, but I wonder if that's what some of the proponents of legalization are thinking. Obviously heroin has a huge effect on the brain and personality, and it's very difficult to get off it once you're addicted. So there is some rationale to the idea that keeping heroin illegal is helping prevent people from getting involved with it in the first place.

Right now it's (arguably) mostly thrill-seekers or people self-medicating psychological problems or chronic pain (which in itself has a large psychological aspect) using heroin. If you legalize it you potentially open it up to a much larger group who might not have otherwise considered using it.

toyg3• 9 years ago

No proposer of legalization ever thought of it as "a darwin award". If anything, it's the opposite: treating addiction as a health issue usually ensures people will survive - both users, who get "clean" drugs in predictable quantities; and dealers, who can come out of the underworld and not risk their lives running from the police or from other gangs.

The current criminalization is extremely darwinistic: only the most violent thugs survive in the supply chain, and only the smartest users.

I don't think legalizing will increase usage of heroin, because its health problems are huge and extremely well-known. Like putting ferrets up your bum, people are not going to do it simply "because it's legal".

whiddershins• 9 years ago

The risk of overdose is very much increased by lack of quality control.

untangle• 9 years ago

The singular focus on "drug deaths due to overdose" tells an important part of the story, but not the whole story. For example, per Wikipedia, drug use may have doubled after decriminalization.* If so, that's an acceptable tradeoff to me but may not be to others.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

icebraining2• 9 years ago

Read a bit further...

The increase in drug use observed among adults in Portugal was not greater than that seen in nearby countries that did not change their drug laws.

rosser2• 9 years ago

I believe, though am not in a position to dig up a citation right now, that the spike in drug use you're referencing was also temporary, and that usage rates fell significantly, to well below the "baseline" level after that.

Assuming that's true, pointing out the spike, without also mentioning the drop is — at best — ignorant, if not deceitful.

lucaspiller• 9 years ago

I was suprised to see Lithuania so high on the list, as I didn't really think drugs were that common here. However we also have one of the highest suicide rates in the EU, so maybe ODing is a popular way to go...

kaffeemitsahne• 9 years ago

That's not a problem per se, as long as those drug users are happy and don't put their health at risk excessively.

lmickh2• 9 years ago

Find it misleading that almost all of the recent articles on this subject talk about decriminalization as the cause for the drop in drug related health issues.

They shifted a significant chunk of money to health services. If it proves anything, it is only that health services can reduce drug related health issues. Without a control, there is nothing to point to regarding criminalization vs decriminalization. People are now paid to go out to drug dens and offer medical help. You can't simply say "people were scared to get help before" when instead you start sending help straight to their location.

Even when an article mentions the change in spending/focus, it is framed in the context of legalizing drugs. No one is making articles titled "After years of improving health services, Portugal's drug policy paid off".

I get that some folks want to legalize drugs, but make an argument for it that doesn't involve this twisting of results to match the desired outcome.

Radle• 9 years ago

Well, but it clearly shows that making drugs illegal, does not help at all to keep people save.

seanhandley• 9 years ago

What about all the criminals that can no longer make money selling on the black market? Killing unregulated production allows for cleaner, safer substances to be created with known strength and purity.

After decades of prohibition, we can conclude the "War On Drugs" is a lost cause and people will always seek out drugs. If people are going to take drugs regardless, let's make sure they're clean and the profits of sale don't fund criminal gangs.

MadSax• 9 years ago

Herbs should be treated like speech, freely available with education and stipulation that they be used wisely.

aidenn0• 9 years ago

I think regardless of the details of legality, it is strong anecdotal evidence that dollars spent on treatment reduce OD deaths more than dollars spent on enforcement. It adds to a strong body of research that already points in that direction

lmickh2• 9 years ago

Yes, it appears to affirm that law enforcement is not the best bang for the buck. There has been plenty of work indicating that like you mentioned. That wasn't a "bold risk".

That is separate from saying that changing the legality of it impacts the usage though. There is not reason to take the result beyond what it indicates.

anigbrowl2• 9 years ago

They shifted a significant chunk of money to health services.

But everyone knows this, it's the obvious corollary of decriminalization and has been stated over and over.

bdamm2• 9 years ago

How? It's entirely possible to decriminalize and simply move law enforcement monies to other efforts, leaving nothing for health services.

Spooky23• 9 years ago

If you live in the United States, a significant number of people believe that getting sick is a moral failure. Drug use? Forget it.

libertine2• 9 years ago

You've got a point there.

I think one of the main things is that people stopped being considered criminals to being considered "sick" - they have addiction, they need help, so they require health care.

If the police catches you with weed - you'll need to go psychological counseling for example.

jdmoreira2• 9 years ago

I'm Portuguese and I grew up watching the heroin epidemic we had in Portugal. It was horrible, like the article mentions 1% of the population was addicted to heroin. Curiously I now live in Sweden, but I lived in Portugal for the first 11 years of the decriminalization. And the solution actually started years before, in the early 90s. It's a bit like you said, it was an huge investment in public health - the first success was that you could get a kit to inject heroin for free in any pharmacy, paid by the state, no questions asked! It was a huge win against the spread of HIV.

The biggest difference I see comparing the Portuguese reality to the Swedish one is the lack of social stigma regarding drugs. Drugs are just openly discussed in Portugal and addicts are well integrated in society. I have friends whose parents are heroin addicts and for the most part they are a normal family with jobs and responsabilities. Sometimes they relapse but it's not a big deal because they have a network and feel safe to get help quickly and the state sponsors replacement therapies in the meanwhile.

These are people that started doing heroin in the late 80s and for the most part still raised a family and are good parents and neighbors.

It's just a disease like any other and Portuguese people see addiction that way.

CamelCaseName• 9 years ago

I don't have much to say other than that I really admire that sense of thinking, and I hope more countries can adopt a similar vision.

bjelkeman-again• 9 years ago

I wish we could get the same attitude in Sweden. What do you think is the main barrier in Sweden?

rwnspace3• 9 years ago

It's peculiar how reports of sensible policy make me feel Portugal is adorned in rubies and roses. Here in the UK the Home Office recently said they have no plans to look at even the classification of cannabis. Despite most local police forces not bothering with anything but factories, a majority of population supporting legalisation/decriminalisation, and global trends. We are comparatively medieval but for a few smart initiatives. I have heard that Germany and Norway/Sweden also have some very similar attitudes: I blame Calvinism.

I could rant for hours on alcohol and tobacco policy in the UK. A little knowledge of the field of Harm Reduction opens a lot of avenues for criticism. Particularly increasing taxation, which extracts most from the working class and is effective in few use-cases. The UK isn't alone: look up the EU's May 2017 'Tobacco Product Directive' regarding E-cigs. Read: lobbying from groups that are responsible for millions of deaths and public cost are strangling and monopolising a market and technology that is an incredible source of harm reduction... I'm struggling to hold my tongue at this point.

We have a large problem with a political class who don't listen to reason or evidence, simply an innately conservative discourse makes the problem look smaller than it really is. It's fantastic to read a positive outlook on Portugal's policy - it has been smeared countless times here.

alkonaut• 9 years ago

What most keeps me away from hard drugs isn't that the addiction is similar to a horrible disease, but to 99% that it (society's stigma) would cost me my job and my family. I admire the way in which Portugal removed the stigma of existing addicts and how it's considered a disease and not as stigmatized as here (Sweden) but I can't say the "threat of being stigmatized" is 100% negative. You can't have it both ways I guess.

woodandsteel• 9 years ago

Well, yes and no. You are right that it is essential to spend a whole lot of money on health services. But if drugs are illegal then a great deal of those limited funds go instead to policing.

Besides that, people are a whole lot more likely to voluntarily go for help if they know they won't be arrested for what they have been doing.

cvsh• 9 years ago

I get that some folks want to legalize drugs, but make an argument for it that doesn't involve this twisting of results to match the desired outcome.

Criminalizing drugs has negative externalities like boosting the profits of organized crime, but is often argued to outweigh those side effects by suppressing drug use, which is harmful.

If we found a way to make drug use much less harmful, then why would we not decriminalize drugs concurrently, given that its positives are negated so there's no argument remaining that they outweigh its negatives?

Even if the critical factor in reducing drug use harms was health services, the argument for concurrent decriminalization is overwhelming.

Kurtz79• 9 years ago

It's hard to decouple decriminalization (which is not legalization) with simply investing in better treatment for addicts.

If to get treatment they basically have to turn themselves in, and are liable to go to jail, I doubt many would make that choice.

lm2s• 9 years ago

It's not really misleading if you know the how and why. For the addicts to accept health services help (like clean needles or getting off heroin) they could not be under threat of going to jail.

So you decriminalise to allow addicts to come forth and accept clean needles and other help, while simultaneously investing more money to provide that help.

It's a two prong "attack" and it's pretty simple actually.

jdmoreira2• 9 years ago

Exactly. Also, decriminalizing sends a message to the population that addicts are not criminals but people that by a series of mistakes and bad decisions are currently in a bad situation and in need of help.

EGO_DEATH2• 9 years ago

Actually, you can say that people are scared to seek help because of the stigma. In a country with a judgemental culture of shame like Sweden you're in between a rock and a hard place. Because anyone with a credit card can access your legal history and see if you have been convicted for something, it's a pretty self destructive choice to make, and leads to unnecessary suffering.

jdavis703• 9 years ago

There's a bill in California to de-criminalize drugs (AB 186) -- provided you use them in purpose built medical facility. Right now no serious (i.e. elected) politicians are discussing a totally deregulated drug market as far as I know.

mmjaa• 9 years ago

decriminalization

Criminalization means, they send the police to address the issue.

De-criminalizaton means, they no longer send the police to address the issue.

This isn't hand-waving, the term really means what has happened: since people are no longer treated as criminals, humanity has been added to the mix - and, appears to be helping solve the problem.

I think you maybe just don't understand the term. Yes, in fact, de-criminalization is the key issue: patients, not criminals.

cpncrunch6• 9 years ago

In Canada we seem to have de-facto criminalization for possession for personal use. The problem we have now is that 80% of heroin is laced with fentanyl (at least in Vancouver), and it's causing a huge overdose problem. Even cocaine and MDMA is now sometimes cut with fentanyl.

Not sure what the solution is, but perhaps a combination of stronger penalties for dealers, more resources for treating addiction, and legalising weed.

wavegeek• 9 years ago

The problem we have now is that 80% of heroin is laced with fentanyl (at least in Vancouver), and it's causing a huge overdose problem. Even cocaine and MDMA is now sometimes cut with fentanyl.

When you give criminals a monopoly on the supply of recreational drugs, it is predicable that quality will be a problem. Potencies will vary, purity will suffer.

The solution is legalization combined with more health measures.

stronger penalties

How anyone can think that stronger penalties are going to solve the problem escapes me. We have the evidence of 75 years of unrelieved failure of a punitive approach. This is an example of "If something fails, do more of it - That Might Work!".

cpncrunch6• 9 years ago

How anyone can think that stronger penalties are going to solve the problem escapes me

I was referring to Fentanyl-laced heroin.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fentanyl-traf...

It most certainly does make sense to have stronger penalties for dealing drugs that have a high chance of killing people due to being laced with fentanyl. Otherwise it's like having the same penalty for a shoplifter as for an armed robber.

ridgeguy2• 9 years ago

This a predictable consequence of heroin's illegal status.

It's a shift by vendors to higher value density materials.

During U.S. prohibition, vendors replaced illegal beer with gin, moonshine, etc. (higher alcohol/mass and alcohol/volume = smaller shipment volume and probability of detection).

Later, weed fell in favor to hash for similar reasons.

Now we have heroin being potentiated with fentanyl and its derivatives, those being much more powerful, reducing shipment volumes and losses due to detection.

In the U.S., when prohibition was reversed and booze was relegalized, low alcohol beverages returned to the market.

Not an expert, but it appears to me that legalization is required for reduction of overdose rates. It may not be enough by itself, but in its absence, lasting improvement doesn't happen.

cpncrunch6• 9 years ago

heroin's illegal status....legalization is required for reduction of overdose rates

That will only work with supervised injection. Otherwise there will still be overdoses (albeit not as many as with fentanyl).

shawnee_3• 9 years ago

Portugal's performance in perspective: Only three people for every million die of a drug overdose in Portugal, which puts one of the eurozone's poorest countries in a different league than rich international powerhouse Germany (17.6 per million) and in a different universe than social democratic utopia Sweden (69.7 per million).

There's a fascinating documentary called American Addict on what nearly happened before this happened:

"In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. He proclaimed, “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive(Sharp, 1994, p.1).” Nixon fought drug abuse on both the supply and demand fronts." [source]

Before criminalization, the trend in society was to start treating people who are afflicted with addictions like the sick people they are, rather than like criminals. There was an entire movement toward recovery as a necessary way of life for some people who cannot moderate alcohol intake (or drugs or whatever), just like insulin is a way of life for diabetics whose pancreases can't moderate insulin.

Addiction is not a moral issue; it should not be criminalized. It is a medical issue. It is a mental health issue. When it's caught early enough, and treated with the proper mental health regimen, it does not have to be debilitating.

Instead, what happened with war on drugs was mass-market criminalization... essentially forcing alcoholics and addicts forced into debilitation (hiding / shame)... leading to further desire for escapism through the addiction. It's a terrible cycle, and the worst part of it is that some counties have made things like DUIs into their bread-and-butter mainstream source of revenue.

It's hard to say what the trend today is going toward. The privatization of jails is especially disconcerting; like society wants to trick itself into thinking that the more people it has locked up the "safer" it is.

[source]http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/parado...

mythrwy4• 9 years ago

While I generally agree with most of what you state I'd like to offer the unpopular opinion that the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing.

Not that there aren't extenuating circumstances, not that it's a "terrible crime", but, it is a vice in which people for the most part, at least initially, have some choice.

Again, I'm in favor of most everything you suggest, particularly decriminalization (which just makes sense). Still, in my view people need to take a little more personal responsibility. There are always excuses if we look for them.

The best way to encourage people to take a little more responsibility? Probably most of what you suggest as well as giving people healthy environments and opportunity and something to be optimistic about.

But traditionally shaming works a little as well. As unpleasant as this may sound. We appear to have come to a spot we think people shouldn't be shamed for anything. Well, except for being a racist or using PHP maybe. Shame was an effective social control for a long time and if we are going to do away with it we need to find a replacement.

mattnewton3• 9 years ago

I think that shame doesn't help the people already addicted- it makes it harder for them to deal with their current issues. It encourages avoidance of help, and avoidance of looking at the problem head on. A better deterrent in my opinion would simply be ads about the consequences, like successful anti smoking campaigns. It would be hard for me to disagree more than I do with the advocacy of continued shame for addiction.

dannysu• 9 years ago

Sometimes people get addicted to drugs starting from painkillers, which are prescribed by doctors. http://www.businessinsider.com/heroin-drug-overdoses-prescri...

At least in this case, perhaps it's not just a moral failing. Maybe it's an education issue? Or some other way we should help prevent situations like this.

shawnee_3• 9 years ago

the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing.

Watch the documentary I mentioned above. Also try this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4079250/ Addiction is a mental health issue before it becomes a debilitating physical health issue ... one that (very often) leads to suicide or death. To suggest that unwell people have the strength to fight it on their own with the strength of "morals" is really damaging to your argument.

Besides: the healthy environment you want to "give people" is totally subjective. Who decides what is "healthy" for whom? Now you're back to policing and criminalizing ... these things do not work to improve the mental health of sick people.

JamesBarney• 9 years ago

You must being living in a very different community than mine. I live in Texas and being a heroin/cocaine/alcohol/nicotine(not as much) addict is a shameful thing. Yet we still have quiet the drug problem.

I've only known a few people who fell down the deadly spiral of drug abuse. But each one hid their addiction because of shame until it was so terrible they couldn't. And I believe if it had been less shameful they might have gotten support before they completely ruined their lives.

ridgeguy2• 9 years ago

May I suggest Johann Hari's book "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs"?

It addresses (among other things) the personal responsibility component of American attitudes towards drug use. I found it informative and an excellent read.

PrimalDual• 9 years ago

I have been thinking along the same lines lately. Issues like addiction and poverty are complex, multicausal and cannot objectively be blamed solely on the individual. Still, we have to consider what a person needs to believe in order to act in their best interests. I cannot imagine a situation where someone overcomes addiction or poverty with a victim mindset. Ultimately, you have to believe you are still in control to some degree even if it's only enough to accept help. Social mechanisms like shaming seem useful as a reminder that regardless of your state you are still responsible for yourself. I understand vulnerable people like addicts need help but I don't think always seeing them as victims of circumstances is the right approach.

jeffdavis• 9 years ago

Thank you for articulating a sincere opinion. Regardless of whether it's a good opinion, many people share it and it is worth discussing.

I don't know what downvoters are trying to accomplish here, frankly.

tigershark2• 9 years ago

Most importantly following the same reasoning so popular here we could argue that no one is a criminal, if anyone commits some crimes it is because of the social environment in which he was raised, or because of some mental health issues, or whatever excuse you want to find. In these years we are assisting to a de-responsibilization in which every one is excused for any behaviour. Pointing out like you that a lot of the addicts at the beginning did a conscious choice to use drugs will just bring a lot of downvotes and simply false replies asserting that everyone is an addict because it was given some pain relief medication or that alcohol is worse than heroin, just to make some people curious about it and to try it probably.

ausvisaissues4• 9 years ago

You are wrong: it is a big moral failing. Why is it impossible for Westerners not to use drugs, while the Japanese manage not to use it fairly well?

Should we set the bar for behaviour so low?

Even if drugs were legalized, the cost for treatment would be high (and presumably be bourne by the tax payer).

chrisbennet• 9 years ago

The true reason for the war on drugs was to be able to attack blacks and anti-war demonstrators, according to Nixon' domestic policy advisor:

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

aaronbrethorst• 9 years ago

Thanks for posting this. It explains a lot, including Jeff Sessions’s desire to restart the War on Drugs.

randyrand• 9 years ago

People caught with less than a 10-day supply of a drug

That's a tiny amount. Punishing people that like to buy in larger quantities for convenience seems silly. They should have come up with a another or increased metric to determine who the dealers were.

justaaron• 9 years ago

I want to point out that this is merely a heroin-inspired "harm reduction" law that removes the criminal penalties from having some arbitrary few number of days supply of any particular illegal substance. (10 days)

It does not recognize any distinction between substances and retains a "shame on you" psy-ops bureau that users caught with minor amounts of said substances are referred to, in lieu of the criminal justice system. This "toxic-dependency" panel has sanctions available including monetary fines and revocation of ones passport or other travel restrictions, to bend one to their ways.

This set of laws does not treat the SUPPLY chain at all!

If one has an amount of substance greater than the threshold one can expect charges of traffic/distribution, which then will collapse after the 1 year investigation results in the non-election to pursue such charges, which has meanwhile resulted in the de-facto punishment of 1 year of weekly(some interval) police-station-sign-ins and a form of house arrest.

It's not a complete set of laws, and while it did manage to dispatch the heroin crisis of years past, it doesn't make any distinction, and thus is impeding efforts towards home cultivation of cannabis being legalized, etc.

De-criminalization, like medical cannabis, has the unfortunate tendency of providing laurels to rest upon, and thus impeding further progress. (observe Spains cooperatives, where signed members cooperatively grow and share in the crop)

Basically, Portugal has a very mature attitude to many things: letting the golden dreams of empire fade as they should, accepting that some people behave rashly and putting an emphasis on harm reduction etc. The emergency services here generally are excellent, professional, and calm in demeanour. I don't think that in practice one notes any major difference in drug usage in society with regards to the rest of Europe, I think one simply notes a bit less paranoia.

By comparison, I find it very odd that more than 15 states in the USA have medical or legal cannabis, yet harm reduction for heroin seems to be missing, and hence I'll just say that some people like to learn the hard way :D

petre• 9 years ago

Romania is on the last place according to the chart in the article and drug possesion is a criminal offense in this country. It's punishable by two to five years in jail. The rehab is inside the penitenciary, so you first go to jail, then to rehab.

Also it's quite interesting how just about every country that's close to the Netherlands, save for France which criminalizes posession, is at the top of the chart.

I've been to Lisbon and was approached countless times on the street by shady individuals trying to sell drugs, usually mj/hash but also coke, maybe one time out of ten. This is not a widespread thing in the rest of Portugal, just in Lisbon's very touristy city centre where.

galfarragem• 9 years ago

I've been to Lisbon and was approached countless times on the street by shady individuals trying to sell drugs, usually mj/hash but also coke

They are mostly groups of gypsies selling fake drugs and sunglasses that will escalate to coercion if necessary/possible. Police is normally very permissive.

ino• 9 years ago

This is the truth. Those guys are there to scam tourists.

perilunar• 9 years ago

As João Goulão, the architect of Portugal's decriminalization model, told Hari, "using drugs is only a symptom of some suffering, and we have to reach the reasons."

Not necessarily. Using (harder) drugs is no more an indication of mental health problems than using alcohol. Many people use drugs recreationally without becoming addicted.

Odenwaelder• 9 years ago

Has this guy walked the streets of Lisbon? You can't walk 50m without being offered drugs. It sucks.

randomstudent• 9 years ago

This article is very weak... They cherry pick a single metric (overdose-related deaths) and use that to prove Portugal's policy is the best thing ever.

Other metrics that are relevant: Has drug use increased or decreased? What about the burden of disease associated with drug use? Also, even more importantly: What has happended to deaths in other countries over time?

EGO_DEATH2• 9 years ago

Decreased usage domestically, increased overdose in other countries, Sweden for instance, by a lot.

wwwater• 9 years ago

There is an amazing TED talk by Johann Hari on that topic https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...

marze• 9 years ago

Is this a correct summary?

USA

150 deaths/million/year

Portugal

3 deaths/million/year

crimsonalucard• 9 years ago

What does it mean to have a lower OD rate if legalization caused the entire population to become addicts? There needs to be a more comprehensive and less biased examination on what happened to this country. Anyone know the addiction rate vs other countries?

14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

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