NewScientist (9 April 2016, paywall) surveys the drug decriminalization/legalization landscape, checking in on various nations. I found the section on Portugal particularly fascinating:
In Portugal you can take any illicit substance without fear of jail – ecstasy, cocaine, even heroin. Critics warned this policy, introduced in 2001, would encourage more people to take drugs. Instead, drug use is slightly down by most measures.
The biggest change has been the health gains for users. Deaths related to drug use have shrunk to less than one-quarter of what they were in 2001. New HIV infections among drug injectors have shrunk to about one-twentieth.
Only the use of drugs has been decriminalised, not their sale, so criminals still profit. “But the policy was not brought in to reduce crime, it was to help people with drug dependence,” says Alex Stevens, who heads the International Society of the Study of Drug Policy, UK. “The evidence shows they have met their goals.”
Stevens says the health gains have not arisen from decriminalisation alone, but also from the services that were put in place when the law was introduced, like the provision of free needles for injectors, and methadone for those wanting to quit heroin.
A year ago Policy.mic provided a description and general history of Portuguese authority’s reaction to a drug user:
If someone is found in the possession of less than a 10-day supply of anything from marijuana to heroin, he or she is sent to a three-person Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, typically made up of a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker. The commission recommends treatment or a minor fine; otherwise, the person is sent off without any penalty. A vast majority of the time, there is no penalty.
And they provide a time-series chart, sourced from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation:
A more scholarly approach to the subject is provided by Hannah Laqueur in “Uses and Abuses of Drug Decriminalization in Portugal“, publishing in the Journal of the American Bar Foundation, where she comprehensively covers the subject, caveats and all.
Portugal did not conduct a general population survey on drug and alcohol use until 2001. The second survey was done in 2007, and the third in 2012; however, at the time of this writing, the results from 2012 were not yet available.32Researchers have frequently referenced the reports from 2001 and 2007 both in support of and cautioning against Portugal’s reforms (e.g., Greenwald 2009; White House 2010). The data are in Table 4. Recent use (within the previous year) of any drug including cannabis was virtually table
(3.4 percent in 2001 compared to 3.7 percent in 2007) and current use within the previous thirty days) was identical in the two periods (2.5 percent). Reported lifetime use of any drug increased from 7.8 percent in 2001 to 12 percent in 2007 (IDT 2009). As is always an issue with self-reported data, however, increases in reported drug use might be an artifact of greater willingness to report as a consequence of changes in the stigma rather than actual changes in use. Insofar as the statistics represent real change, the increase mostly in reported lifetime use suggests the change was in short-term experimentation rather than an increase in the regularly using population.
Portugal is one small nation, and the United States is one big nation that is very tentatively moving along the spectrum – and not all at once. Consider Steve Benen’s recent coverage at Maddowblog of Governor LePage of Maine and his disparagement of the health model of drug use and addiction:
The Portland Press Herald reported yesterday, for example, on a LePage position that’s likely to literally cost lives.Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill Wednesday that would allow pharmacists to dispense an anti-overdose drug without a prescription, saying that allowing addicts to keep naloxone on hand “serves only to perpetuate the cycle of addiction.”The Legislature passed the bill “under the hammer” – or unanimously without a roll call – this month as part of lawmakers’ attempts to address Maine’s growing opioid addiction epidemic.
In a statement explaining his rationale, the Republican governor argued, “Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose.”Note, this was a written statement, not an off-the-cuff comment made during a press conference or an interview. LePage actually thought about his specific position, and argued that a life-saving drug treatment that prevents overdoes “merely extends” the lives of addicts – and he’s against that.Maine’s governor, in a rather literal sense, made the case in writing that those struggling with opioid addiction don’t have lives worth saving. If LePage is convinced these people’s lives shouldn’t be extended, practically by definition, he’s making the case that their lives should be curtailed.
Not encouraging.
There are so many variables that drawing general conclusions off-the-cuff is a dangerous business. My suspicion is that we’ll find there’ll always be a certain portion of the populace that will have an undeterrable interest in using drugs. We’ve certainly seen this conclusively with alcohol. Whether it’s a nurture or nature driver is less clear; examples and counterexamples abound just in my family history, where my maternal grandparents were alcoholics, while my mother, who was abused by them, was not interested in alcohol, while her brothers were rarely without a beer in hand; neither my sister nor I have an interest in alcohol, beyond occasionally cooking with it.
If we assume my suspicion is true, then it simply makes sense to proceed down the decriminalization and even legalization paths, and be willing to accept that a certain percentage of our citizens will use drugs. I know the anathema side of this debate will be horrified, but the simple truth is that many drug users do not qualify as addicts, they simply use as they feel the need and stop whenever they wish. And then there are those will be addicts, just as we have alcoholics, and we’ll have the hard business of taking care of them as well. The real question is whether it’s a health or a criminal problem; Portugal has chosen the former, and has not suffered horrid consequences. If we were to do the same, would our society collapse? Or could we stop endangering both citizens and law enforcement with drug busts?
