Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal's elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs — from marijuana to heroin — but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation's criminal justice system and improving the people's overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.
But nearly a decade later, there's evidence that Portugal's great drug experiment not only didn't blow up in its face; it may have actually worked. More addicts are in treatment. Drug use among youths has declined in recent years. Life in Casal Ventoso, Lisbon's troubled neighborhood, has improved. And new research, published in the British Journal of Criminology, documents just how much things have changed in Portugal. Coauthors Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens report a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and, shortly after the reforms took hold, a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized — indications, the authors argue, that police officers, freed up from focusing on small-time possession, have been able to target big-time traffickers while drug addicts, no longer in danger of going to prison, have been able to get the help they need.
Not everyone agrees with this analysis. The rate of people reporting drug use in Portugal is, in fact, increasing — and some say alarmingly so. Others argue that it's hard to draw lessons from Portugal's experiment because the nation increased access to treatment at the same time it decriminalized drugs. Many believe that Portugal's new focus on treatment — and prevention — may have had as much, if not more, to do with its success than its policy of decriminalization.
For more, see Drug Experiment by , January 16, 2011 at The Boston Globe.
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