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IPFS News Link • Drug War

Portugal's Approach to Drugs Is Saving Lives; Why Aren't We Copying It?

• Truthdig

From The Washington Post:

Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine and maybe a referral to a treatment program—not jail time and a criminal record.

Whenever we debate similar measures in the U.S.—marijuana decriminalization, for instance—many drug-policy makers predict dire consequences. "If you make any attractive commodity available at lower cost, you will have more users," former Office of National Drug Control Policy deputy director Thomas McLellan once said of Portugal's policies. Joseph Califano, founder of the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, once warned that decriminalization would "increase illegal drug availability and use among our children." ... Drug use and drug deaths are complicated phenomena. They have many underlying causes. Portugal's low death rate can't be attributable solely to decriminalization. As Dr. Joao Goulao, the architect of the country's decriminalization policy, has said, "it's very difficult to identify a causal link between decriminalization by itself and the positive tendencies we have seen."


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