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(Nacho Doce/Reuters)
Legalize it?
In Portugal, decriminalizing heroin, cocaine and marijuana has worked better than arresting users. Is it time to legalize?
[Editor's note: This was published in GlobalPost Passport. To read the full story, join Passport.]
The benefits are indisputable.
Since July 1, 2001, all drugs including cocaine and heroine have been decriminalized in Portugal. Eight years later, consumption has decreased significantly. About half of the nearly 400 lives lost every year to overdoses are now saved.
Drug users had represented more than half of all new HIV cases in Portugal, or nearly 1,400 individuals infected annually. That toll has fallen to 400 per year, about 25 percent of the total.
Ironically, a recent study — O Estado da Nação, sponsored by a newspaper (Diário de Notícias) radio station (TSF) and a TV station (SIC) — showed that a large number of Portuguese actually believe that narcotic-related problems have increased in recent years.
This paradox mirrors the difficulty health experts faced in the 1990’s convincing lawmakers and the public that decriminalizing narcotic possession for personal use would help address the runaway growth in substance abuse.
“We heard just about every argument,” remembers João Goulão, director of the Instituto da Droga e Toxicodependência (IDT), a government drug policy agency. “People said that Portugal would become a paradise for drug dealers, a tourist destination for drug addicts. It didn’t happen. In fact, we now have objective data that shows quite the opposite.”
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President Obama would be well advised to review the results of Portugals decriminalization program. Ultimately - not in the near future, but ultimately - they will try it in the US.
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