> That fewer young people are trying drugs in Portugal may be the case (“Radical drug law could be imported to Britain”, April 22). But this simply reflects a Europe-wide trend, nowhere more evident than in the United Kingdom. The alarming Europe-wide increase in young people’s illicit drug use between 1995 and 2003 has come to a halt and is decreasing — in Portugal by rather less than the European average.
http://dpnoc.ca/2011/05/01/portugal-drug-direction-praised-f...
Now I'm fairly skeptical of any article of this sort written by someone from an organization who has "oppose legalization of drugs" as one of their principles, but I've checked some of their facts against the UNODC World Drug Report and they seem sound. Now either I'm missing something, or the UNODC report is wrong, or there's something else not being taken into account. Can anyone shed some light?