The success of drug decriminalization in Portugal

Glenn Greenwald

Saturday March 14, 2009 06:19 EDT


In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present. Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon). Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.


There is clearly a growing recognition around the world and even in the U.S. that, strictly on empirical grounds, criminalization approaches to drug usage and, especially, the "War on Drugs," are abject failures, because they worsen the exact problems they are ostensibly intended to address. "Strictly on empirical grounds" means excluding from the assessment: (a) ideological questions regarding the legitimacy of imprisoning adults for consuming drugs they choose to consume; (b) the evisceration of Constitutional and civil liberties wrought by drug criminalization; and (c) the extraordinary sums of money devoted to the War on Drugs both domestically and internationally.

 

Wow thats really a breath of fresh air. I hope the United states will soon realize that we have prolonged a drug war that could have been stopped a long time ago. There are definitely going to be repercussions for having drugs legal but I think the benefits out weight the negatives. Im a believer in natural selection so if people want to turn into drugs addicts then be my guess. Freedom to ingest whatever your body so desires or wants.

RON PAUL 2012

 

They make more money off it being illegal so this won't happen unless we get some major reforms, like taking our country back from the banks.

 

Good point. The official estimate is that 7% of the financial capital circulating in Wall St. markets is indirectly related to the drug trade. That probably means the actual percentage is higher.

But good news about the Portugal thing! :cheers2:

 

Could you elaborate on they? Do you mean the drug traffickers or the country? im pretty sure the US spends billions of dollars on fighting a drug trade that will never stop. If there is a demand, there will always be a supply and seller. really the way to make money for the US is just to legalize drugs so the money is put into the drug war will flow back into the gov's pocket.

 

That's pretty amazing news!

But didn't the UK legalize all drugs?

Did they have that kind of result, i wonder? ...

brb

Yikes! Looks like they legalized everything,

and then had a HORRIBLE result,

in the way of drug-related crime, OD's, and addiction rates.

Hmmm...

Here's a link:

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/DEBATE/myths/myths4.htm

 

waaaaahhhh?? i hadnt heard that...

 

You may actually be too young to remember it...

But they did, for a while, it looks like.

Then, they had to go back to the drawing board.

Wonder about some studies for just herb legalization?

 

Oh, hey! And that's just ONE source...

Let's take our time, and see what other citations we can find, eh?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_and_against_drug_prohibition

^ ^ THAT LINK ^ ^ will give you ALL of the most current info,

Pro-Legalization AND Anti-Legalization,

and you can make up your own mind about ALL of the different drugs that are addressed.

Have fun!

 

If the govt. is spending billions, organizations and people are earning billions and building little/large kingdoms, and hording power, etc., etc.

 

@ Fyrenza

I wasnt debating whether or not legalization would solve the world's drug problems. i was stating that i had never heard that the UK had legalized all drugs as you said. nowhere in the articles you posted does it mention this. am i missing something?

 

No, no, no!

i'm the one that was confused!

They DID legalize heroin, but none of the rest, i don't guess.

(Remember ~ when i first ever heard about it, i was still a teenager!

To us, if heroin was legal, EVERYTHING was legal!)

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