In the 1990s, 5000 addicts roamed across the streets searching for the daily fix as dirty syringes piled up in the trash. Back then, Portugal was at the burge of heroin addiction. Portugal had the highest rate of HIW infection in the entire European Union. People had sores filled with maggots and some lost their arms and legs from repeating drug use.

Over a long period of two decades, the government’s response was shown very harsh politics, leading to the criminal justice system, while the critics spoke against drug use. From the late 90s, more than half of the people in prison were caught for drug-related reasons. However, in 2001, Portugal made a huge choice. They became the first country to decriminalize the consumption of all drugs.

War on Drugs

Seventeen years later, the US is suffering which is one of the worst addiction pandemics in American history. In 2016, about 64,000 Americans died from overuse, which is more than the combined death rate of Americans in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars. Portugal, on the other side, had plummeted the death rate that was drug-induced to five times lower than the European Union average. Its rate of HIW has also dropped from 104.2 million cases with drugs to 4.2 million.

How was Portugal able to overcome this rising problem of drug addiction? After four decades of authoritarian rule, Portugal was finally opened to the world in 1974 embracing freedom. Soldiers have also returned from colonies with a variety of drugs. So many years of isolation had made the country poor to tackle the influx of drugs, and it lacked knowledge about the health risks of different drugs. And the culture of liberation spiraled into a crisis.

Although a study from 2001 found that the level of drug consumption in the country was among the lowest, cases of drug use were especially bad in Portugal. Unlike other Western countries, where groups have the bee the most vulnerable to heroin addiction, Portugal’s drug crisis has spread across all parts.

A study from 2015 found that after Portugal approved the national strategy in 1999 that led to the decriminalization of drugs, the cost of drug misuse decreased by 18%, and the number of people who were imprisoned for drug law violations decreased from 44% in 1999 to 24% in 2013.

Bajekal, N. (2018, August 1). Want to win the War on Drugs? Portugal might have the answer. Time. https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/