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.<p>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.<p>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".<p>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.
<i>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).</i><p>There's a fascinating documentary called <i>American Addict</i> on what nearly happened before this happened:<p>"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]<p>Before criminalization, the trend in society was to start treating people who are afflicted with addictions like the <i>sick people</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>[source]<a href="http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/paradox/htele.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/parado...</a>
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.<p>* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal</a>
The critical part missing from portugals policy is that drugs must be legal to buy and sell (via controlled channels).<p>Decriminalizing use helps, but legalizing sales take out the crime and ensures the health of users through clean product.
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)<p>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.<p>This set of laws does not treat the SUPPLY chain at all!<p>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.<p>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.<p>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)<p>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.<p>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
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.
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 <i>inside</i> the penitenciary, so you first go to jail, then to rehab.<p>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.<p>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.
There is an amazing TED talk by Johann Hari on that topic <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...</a>
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.<p>Not sure what the solution is, but perhaps a combination of stronger penalties for dealers, more resources for treating addiction, and legalising weed.
> People caught with less than a 10-day supply of a drug<p>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.
> 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."<p>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.
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?
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.<p>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?
Counterpoint, overdoes deaths increased during some years and drug use has markedly increased:<p>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.<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/10/portugal-decriminalisation-drugs-britain_n_2270789.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/10/portugal-decrimin...</a>