Is the Legalization of Drugs in Portugal a Success?

In 2001 the Portuguese government became the first country to decriminalize drugs- now this does not mean shops can sale drugs, or drug dealers can register themselves as legal businesses-no- this means anyone caught in possession of certain quantity of drugs (less then a ten day supply) for personal use does not have to go to prison and have their reputation malhawked, rather they are forced to meet and be evaluated by a social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney who outline reasonable actions to help the drug user if they indeed need help at all.

It reminds me of an episode of The Wire, where an audacious district commander, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin sick of the failing methods used in squalid neighborhoods in fighting the criminal drug hierarchy sets up Hamsterdam, where he copies the methods of Amsterdam and proposes that as long as drug dealers agree to stay off other streets other than the street allocated they can go about their business. It is interesting to note contrary to common belief marijuana has never been legal in the Netherlands, rather they consciously turned a blind eye to enforcing the law against shops which provided marijuana to customers.

 So why did Portugal break way from the general, conservative European drug policies?  The reason why Portugal enacted such radical laws was that it had the worse drug use in all of the European Union, so they felt a different approach was needed and urgently. João Goulão the president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction said " we were out of options". Portugal had the highest AIDS caused by dirty syringes deaths than anywhere else in the European Union in 1999.

So has it paid off?The statistics say yes, their are vast improvements. Portugal nowadays finds itself with the lowest rate of marijuana users in Europe, America has roughly 450% more marijuana users and hilariously they have the most stringent laws in the entire world for drug use, America Fail! Since the new laws were introduced, drug use and drug-related deaths have fallen along with the bonus of a rise in those seeking treatment for drug addiction due to the fact that they are no longer afraid of criminal prosecution for seeking such help to their drug problems. There has also been more success in catching those higher up the chain of organized drug-related crime. Glenn Greenwald who worked for the Cato Institute on researching the results of the new laws said “judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country."