13 ms·

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

416 points by cirrus-clouds 9y ago

11thEarlOfMar 9y 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 9y 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 :-(
vivekd 9y 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-decriminalisation-drugs-britain_n_2270789.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/10/portugal-decrimin...
- pdpi 9y 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.
  - vivekd 9y 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
    - pdpi 9y ago
      I know you didn't. I did.
tompazourek 9y ago
When I saw the chart I thought, what's wrong with Estonia?
- jacquesm 9y 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.
  - monksy 9y 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?
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      NL would be good comparison material.
    - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
      I think you missed the point of jacquesm's comment: "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." In other words, it's highly likely that Romania didn't "do better" than Portugal, but rather they're doing a very poor job tracking overdoses at all.
      - monksy 9y ago
        Oh, if that data was bad, they should have even included it in the graph.
        9y ago
drefgert 9y 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 9y ago
  I agree with this. Legalization, with regulation, is a workable system. Decriminalization engenders disrespect for the law - there are too many inconsistencies.
  - icebraining 9y 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.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  Even with clean heroin, there is still a danger from overdose. https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates 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.
  - toyg 9y ago
untangle 9y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
- icebraining 9y 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.
- rosser 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.
lmickh 9y 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 9y ago
  Well, but it clearly shows that making drugs illegal, does not help at all to keep people save.
  - seanhandley 9y 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.
    - thatswrong0 9y ago
      Exactly. Beyond removing the criminal element, the fentanyl epidemic should make the destructive nature of our current policy so obvious as to warrant the complete legalization (and regulation) of heroin. People are dying at incredibly high rates because they are not getting pure substances - they are receiving substances cut with something that can kill at tiny doses. Not only do heroin addicts have to deal with heroin overdoses (which are still quite possible), but they have to deal with fentanyl overdoses. Every time they use unregulated product, they are gambling with their lives. Our drug policy in America is completely ignorant of this reality.
cpncrunch 9y 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 9y 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!".
  - cpncrunch 9y 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-traffickers-bc-stiffer-sentences-1.4024080 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.
    - martinald 9y ago
      How does that work? The whole mess is because of this. Fentanyl is 100x stronger per gram than heroin. Therefore you can import 100th the quantity and still make (in theory) make similar money on the street. It is exactly because you get a worse sentence for higher quantities that drug dealers have optimised to get the strongest per gram drug. You will get a lighter sentence for 1g of fent vs 100g of heroin, no doubt. This is a cycle always seen in prohibition - there was a massive shift from beer and wine to spirits in the 1920s US when alcohol is prohibited. Throwing harsher sentences will not help whatsoever and is likely to be counterproductive.
shawnee_ 9y 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/paradox/htele.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/parado...
- mythrwy 9y 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.
randyrand 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y ago
    This is the truth. Those guys are there to scam tourists.
perilunar 9y 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 9y ago
Has this guy walked the streets of Lisbon? You can't walk 50m without being offered drugs. It sucks.
randomstudent 9y 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_DEATH 9y ago
  Decreased usage domestically, increased overdose in other countries, Sweden for instance, by a lot.
wwwater 9y ago
There is an amazing TED talk by Johann Hari on that topic https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...
CaseInsensitive 9y ago
It's great that they lowered their overdose percentage, but it's curious that they don't enumerate their actual addiction numbers. Again, it's great that they are getting people treatment instead of jail, but what is their overall addiction rate, and what's their success rate in getting people clean?
Manager 9y ago
Why would decriminalizing suddenly make people less likely to OD? The people that OD are often people that were users, have quit, but started using again but retake the drugs at their previous amounts without accounting for their loss in tolerance.
marze 9y ago
Is this a correct summary? USA 150 deaths/million/year Portugal 3 deaths/million/year
crimsonalucard 9y 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?

416 points by cirrus-clouds 9y 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 9y 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 :-(

vivekd 9y 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-decriminalisation-drugs-britain_n_2270789.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/10/portugal-decrimin...

pdpi 9y 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.
- vivekd 9y 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
  - pdpi 9y ago
    I know you didn't. I did.

tompazourek 9y ago

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

jacquesm 9y 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.
- monksy 9y 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?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    NL would be good comparison material.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    I think you missed the point of jacquesm's comment: "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." In other words, it's highly likely that Romania didn't "do better" than Portugal, but rather they're doing a very poor job tracking overdoses at all.
    - monksy 9y ago
      Oh, if that data was bad, they should have even included it in the graph.
      - 9y ago

drefgert 9y 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 9y ago
I agree with this. Legalization, with regulation, is a workable system. Decriminalization engenders disrespect for the law - there are too many inconsistencies.
- icebraining 9y 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.
cpncrunch 9y ago
Even with clean heroin, there is still a danger from overdose. https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates 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.
- toyg 9y ago

untangle 9y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

icebraining 9y 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.
rosser 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.

lmickh 9y 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 9y ago
Well, but it clearly shows that making drugs illegal, does not help at all to keep people save.
- seanhandley 9y 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.
  - thatswrong0 9y ago
    Exactly. Beyond removing the criminal element, the fentanyl epidemic should make the destructive nature of our current policy so obvious as to warrant the complete legalization (and regulation) of heroin. People are dying at incredibly high rates because they are not getting pure substances - they are receiving substances cut with something that can kill at tiny doses. Not only do heroin addicts have to deal with heroin overdoses (which are still quite possible), but they have to deal with fentanyl overdoses. Every time they use unregulated product, they are gambling with their lives. Our drug policy in America is completely ignorant of this reality.

cpncrunch 9y 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 9y 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!".
- cpncrunch 9y 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-traffickers-bc-stiffer-sentences-1.4024080 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.
  - martinald 9y ago
    How does that work? The whole mess is because of this. Fentanyl is 100x stronger per gram than heroin. Therefore you can import 100th the quantity and still make (in theory) make similar money on the street. It is exactly because you get a worse sentence for higher quantities that drug dealers have optimised to get the strongest per gram drug. You will get a lighter sentence for 1g of fent vs 100g of heroin, no doubt. This is a cycle always seen in prohibition - there was a massive shift from beer and wine to spirits in the 1920s US when alcohol is prohibited. Throwing harsher sentences will not help whatsoever and is likely to be counterproductive.

shawnee_ 9y 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/paradox/htele.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/parado...

mythrwy 9y 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.

randyrand 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y ago
  This is the truth. Those guys are there to scam tourists.

perilunar 9y 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 9y ago

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

randomstudent 9y 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_DEATH 9y ago
Decreased usage domestically, increased overdose in other countries, Sweden for instance, by a lot.

wwwater 9y ago

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

CaseInsensitive 9y ago

It's great that they lowered their overdose percentage, but it's curious that they don't enumerate their actual addiction numbers. Again, it's great that they are getting people treatment instead of jail, but what is their overall addiction rate, and what's their success rate in getting people clean?

Manager 9y ago

Why would decriminalizing suddenly make people less likely to OD? The people that OD are often people that were users, have quit, but started using again but retake the drugs at their previous amounts without accounting for their loss in tolerance.

marze 9y ago

Is this a correct summary? USA 150 deaths/million/year Portugal 3 deaths/million/year

crimsonalucard 9y 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?