Ten years of decriminalization in Portugal
Ten years ago, in July 2001, Portugal decriminalized the use and possession of all illicit drugs including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Portugal’s ten year decriminalization anniversary is described as providing a real-world model of one way to address an issue that is a social and economic drag on countries world-wide. Many had predicted disaster - that plane loads of "drug tourists" would descend on Portugal knowing that they couldn't end up in court. But what one politician called "the promise of sun, beaches and any drug you like" simply did not materialise.
"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," said João Goulão (pictured), Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction (Instituto da Droga e da Toxicodependência) in Time Magazine last year, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.
According to a study in 2009 by the Cato Institute, decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. The data showed that the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world.
A more recent study in the British Journal of Criminology, What Can We Learn From The Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?, concluded that contrary to predictions, the Portuguese decriminalization did not lead to major increases in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding.
Decriminalization in Portugal led to a reduction in the number of prisoners who were sentenced for drug offences, declining from a peak of 44 percent in 1999 to 28 percent in 2005. Decreasing imprisoned drug offenders contributed to a marked reduction in prison overcrowding. By 2005 the number of prisoners no longer exceeded the official prison capacity.
The large drop in heroin-related deaths (from 350 in 1999 to 98 in 2003) can be linked to the significant increase of users who entered substitution treatment. Though deaths related to the use of some other drugs did rise, there was an overall fall in drug-related deaths of 60 percent between 1999 and 2003.
The effect of decriminalization on levels of drug use is subject to different interpretations. Heroin use went markedly down, but cocaine and cannabis use did go up, especially among the young, as it did in several other European countries, while Portugal is still markedly below the EU average.
Overall, as the Cato Institute concluded, “judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. …Drug policymakers in the Portuguese government are virtually unanimous in their belief that decriminalization has enabled a far more effective approach to managing Portugal’s addiction problems and other drug-related afflictions.”
