Portugal situation is a bit more nuanced than 'decriminalized all drugs' implies. Drugs are still very much illegal and cannot be owned or traded. Not even marijuana. What changed is that possession of small quantities of drugs no longer leads to prison, but may lead to administrative penalties.
> In July 2001, a new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. The offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison as a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply of that substance.[2] This was in line with the de facto Portuguese drug policy before the reform. Drug addicts were then to be aggressively targeted with therapy or community service rather than fines or waivers.[9] Even if there are no criminal penalties, these changes did not legalize drug use in Portugal. Possession has remained prohibited by Portuguese law, and criminal penalties are still applied to drug growers, dealers and traffickers.[10][11] Despite this, the law was still associated with a nearly 50% decrease in convictions and imprisonments of drug traffickers from 2001 to 2015.[12]
> The offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison as a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply of that substance.
Indeed this is the difference between decentralization and legalization.
They did a lot of things yes! Very true. I advocate for the whole model.
Are you sure? Litmus test ;) Are you for de-legalization of marijuana?
PS. I always assumed that decriminalization and legalization are synonyms because it never crossed my mind that possessing a tiny quantity of a substance, even illegal, can lead to jail. I'm all for decriminalization of 'personal use' quantities of any given drug.
No, I think any drugs that have been measured and studied to be less harmful than alcohol should be completely legal. And so that is, checks notes all of big ones. [1]
I see decriminalization as a minimum. I do also think a legalization or decriminalization strategy should take into account the harms associated with these substances and offer programs to mitigate social and individual harms.
Appreciate the honesty :) Consider that those with a more conservative position are highly suspicious of underspecified language ('decriminalization', without explicit scope modifiers), which only seem to serve to open the floodgates, and then in a few short years we end up with schools pushing heroin to kids behind their parent backs. All in the name of 'harm reduction' and 'undoing stigma'.
Yep, that's definitely true. In my opinion, for most drug addictions, it is in fact a symptom of a situation than the problem itself. For some people with certain biologies, I suppose that may not be entirely accurate. However one of my favorite studies compares the experiences of GIs before the war, in Vietnam, and when they got back.
Table 1 shows that before the war, 11% of the group surveyed used narcotics. In Vietnam it spiked to 43%. When they got back? 10%. [1]
For most of them, it was heroin. They literally cold turkey quit heroin when they got back from Nam.
What all this tells me is that telling addicts they can’t have drugs and sending them to prison won’t stop them from doing drugs. What will is making them not want to do drugs by changing their situation.
The Vietnam story is definitely an interesting datapoint. They went to Vietnam, had easy access to heroin (it was a war zone, certain civilian rules no longer applied) and fell to the vice. Not sure why you discount the possibility that the primary motivations of cold turkey quitting heroin were the elimination of easy access to heroin and the stigma of living the rest of their lives as heroin addicts.
Prison for drug use is cruel punishment, but therapy & community service (hello Portugal) are entirely reasonable (and effective!) approaches to the problem.
That's what is typically meant by "decriminalization".
Unfortunately decriminalization is only a bad half-solution and all of those who profit off of both sides of the drug war will continue to exist, as will the inconsistent, contaminated, or mislabeled doses that are most fatal.
It is absolutely imperative that we legalize nearly all recreational drugs along with regulatory measures to ensure that these medications are available OTC as standardized individually-packaged doses.
The minimization of harm from drug abuse does also depend on broader societal factors (e.g. wealth inequality), and the transition will be complex, but there are measures to be taken that could drastically cut down on overdoses deaths in no more than a few weeks.
> In July 2001, a new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. The offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison as a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply of that substance.[2] This was in line with the de facto Portuguese drug policy before the reform. Drug addicts were then to be aggressively targeted with therapy or community service rather than fines or waivers.[9] Even if there are no criminal penalties, these changes did not legalize drug use in Portugal. Possession has remained prohibited by Portuguese law, and criminal penalties are still applied to drug growers, dealers and traffickers.[10][11] Despite this, the law was still associated with a nearly 50% decrease in convictions and imprisonments of drug traffickers from 2001 to 2015.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#Regula...