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I live in Portugal. Decriminalization of drugs for personal use happened over ten years ago. Nothing dramatic happened. Life went on as before. Except that we have less people in prison, and more in rehab. And if anything, crime went down and overall drug use decreased.

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Same here. I'm also from Portugal, and I lived with someone with heroin addiction. The fact that he didn't have to fear getting locked up for using was essential in getting him to get help. He's not the perfect citizen now, but he has been clean for years.

Thank you. Some (most?) North Americans seem to be culturally incapable of looking further than their country's borders to see how other nations deal with the same problem... Prohibitionists are usually dumbstruck when i raise the Portugal example, as if i must be just flat-out lying about a country that actually tried something different, and saw positive results.

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