Portugal decriminalized drugs a decade ago – what have we learned? (2011)

So, who the fuck cares? People who want to know if Action X advances Goal Y or Goal Z, both, or neither. Like me, for instance. I want to make the lives of people better, but I also want to be able to connect cause and effect in a way that makes it possible to predict the effects of policies.

The sooner people accept that addiction, like violence, will probably just never disappear completely, the better off they'll be. We're looking at a policy of harm reduction, not the fantasy that we can cure addiction. Some people will always be on the outliers. The question is, do we criminalize their behavior and add an entire criminal subculture or do we accept it in order to reduce the overall harm to society and the addict?

Hear, hear. It doesn't just improve the lives of drug addicts, it reduces crime (and not just the crime of possessing/consuming/selling drugs)and improves public health. I won't go so far as to say legalizing drugs is a Good Thing, but it's certainly the Least Bad Option.

The "making people dependent on the state" argument is also the standard conservative critique of things like unemployment benefit, so it's an argument that an awful lot of people seem to agree with. I expect that is why the author reaches for it so easily (I'm not necessarily saying that the author is a conservative, just that it's a popular way of thinking about these types of issues, hence why the author offers it as 'balance').

And that is the fulcrum on which the debate balances. People who believe it is the state's job to "take care of its people" will criminalize drugs, alchohol, and homelessness, applying the power of the state to "fix" those things. For people who believe the state's responsibility ends where the actions of its citizens doesn't infringe the rights/health/safety of others, will legalize drug use, assisted suicide, unlimited "camping", and liquor stores.

Once you get into that argument, one will say a drug addict doesn't "choose" to be addicted, they are just sick. And if they were sick with Cholera would you object to us arresting people who dumped raw sewage into the street? Why object to us arresting people who prey upon these sick people?

The challenge is of course that there isn't a truly "good" solution yet. Once we can "cure" addiction do we then spin off recreational drug use?

A perverse law has perverse effects. We've created massive organized crime gangs by criminalizing things which should be legal.

I like to tease the Swedes. They thought that alcohol was such a social ill that only a state-run monopoly should be allowed to sell it (so no advertising). The corollary is that they thought other drugs were so bad that only criminal gangs should be allowed to sell them.

For example, in 2013, of around ~200 deaths "induced by drugs", only 22 were actually considered overdoses.

It doesn't just take a burden off the criminal justice. It also, and in my opinion, much more importantly, allows the users to seek help without fearing being imprisoned, and having a criminal record marking their lives.

Drug decriminalization policy was introduced in Portugal in 2000 and was legally in effect as of July 2001. It is reasonable to assume that police enforcement efforts of drug possession laws were scaled down over the first six months of 2001.

Two years later, the murder rate jumped from 1.1 per 100K population (110-120 murders per year) to 1.4 (140-150 murders per year), wobbled around a bit, peaking in 2007 at 1.8 (185 murders per year) after which it dropped back to the 1.1 - 1.2 range (110-130 murders per year) which is difficult to distinguish from the 2000-2002 value.

In the rest of Europe murders mostly declined over the same period, dropping by about a factor of two in Spain (1.4 to 0.8 murders per year) and either dropping slightly or remaining steady, except for Greece, which also saw a bit of bump mid-decade.

So on the face of it, the murder rate in Portugal did jump two years after the drug policy came into effect, and Greece-which saw no such change in policy--saw a similar bump that was unlikely to be caused by Portuguese drug policy.

Furthermore, without change in drug policy, the rate in Portugal has dropped back to what it was before, and is comfortably in the middle of the European range, from lows of 0.8 for places like Germany and Spain to highs of 1.9 in Belgium, with France and the UK both in the 1.1-1.2 range where Portugal currently sits.

So there is no strong case to be made on the raw statistics alone that changes in the murder rate in Portugal have been strongly influenced by changes in drug policy. It is clear that the murder rate in Portugal increased when most of the rest of Europe was decreasing, but so was the murder rate in Greece. Given the two countries have economic similarities (small nations on the European periphery) that suggests--but does nothing like prove--that economic factors might play a role in the murder rate.