Several European countries such as Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have chosen to legalize or decriminalize cannabis for personal use, but one country on the continent comes out above all the rest: Portugal. In Portugal, not only cannabis, but also cocaine, heroin and all drugs have been decriminalized for nearly the past 20 years. Portuguese authorities consider drug use and addiction to be something that can be treated and healed, not a crime for which to be punished.
In 1974, when the dictatorship that had ruled for decades came to an end, Portugal became the heart of drug trafficking in Europe, and locals started falling prey to addiction. Within 30 years, 1% of Portuguese citizens were addicted to heroin, and the country had the highest rate of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infections on the continent; the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that almost 30% of all European HIV cases were in the tiny nation of Portugal.
The problem became so widespread that most middle- and upper-class families had at least one drug addict in their midst; the same people who usually sneer at drug users became gradually more empathetic to their plight, which allowed reforming legislation to move forward. In 2001, drug use stopped being punishable by fines and prison time, and the government became engaged in actively helping addicts recover—free of charge. People caught unlawfully consuming drugs are evaluated by local commissions composed of medical and legal experts who choose how to best help them have a healthy recovery.
Since then, AIDS-related deaths have plummeted, and new HIV infections have been reduced by more than half between 1999 and 2016. Among the new infections in 2016, only 1.5% were associated with drug use according to the WHO, while those cases constituted a majority of these before Portugal’s drug reform laws were enacted.
Rehabilitate or Punish?
Responding to drug use and addiction with rehabilitation rather than punishment has more perks than one may expect. While some people may fear that decriminalized drugs would push the population to consume more drugs, the exact opposite has proven to be the case. In 2015, Portugal was found to be one of the countries with the fewest drug-induced deaths and the lowest rates of cannabis use in the European Union.
In Europe, Estonia has the highest number of drug-related deaths, with 126 cases per million inhabitants. The figure is dwarfed by statistics from the U.S., which saw a staggering 70,237 deaths by drug overdose in 2017, which translates as 215 drug-related deaths per million people. By comparison, Portugal (which, again, has decriminalized all drugs) had only three drug-related deaths per million inhabitants in 2015. Also, while Portuguese citizens can consume cannabis without legal repercussions, 2015 studies found that only 5.1% of Portuguese youth consumed marijuana in the past year, while 32.2% of young Americans consumed cannabis in the same timeframe.
America’s so-called “War on Drugs” has cost well more than a trillion dollars and has destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, according to the Associated Press. Nearly half of all inmates in U.S. federal prisons are there on drug offenses. Imprisoning someone in a federal prison costs, on average, $35,000 per year. What’s the justification for spending so much money to imprison people instead of helping them get better? As we compare our country with Portugal, it becomes clear that criminalizing drugs costs gargantuan amounts of money, destroys countless lives and actually pushes the population to consume drugs at a higher rate. All levels of government in the U.S. should take an honest look at Portugal’s example.
