Portugal has decided to see drugs as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. Photo / Getty Images
Portugal has decided to see drugs as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. Photo / Getty Images
When Portugal decided to decriminalise all drugs in 2001, a lot of people worried drug consumption would skyrocket.
More than a decade and a half's worth of data now shows the opposite happened.
As of July 2001, all drugs are decriminalised. That includes weed, cocaine, heroin, everything.
This does not mean drugs are legal; it means consuming them is not a crime.
What this means is that the Portuguese police force does not arrest anyone it finds with what is considered less than a 10-day supply of drugs - that's a gram of heroin, ecstasy, or amphetamine, two grams of cocaine, or 25 grams of cannabis.
1. Since the decriminalisation, the rate of new HIV infections fell drastically, from 1016 cases in 2001 to only 56 in 2012.
2. Overdose deaths and drug-related deaths in general also saw a sharp decrease. Portugal's current drug-induced death rate, three per million residents, is now more than five times lower than the European Union's average of 17.3.
3. Consumption of legal highs plunged as drug users did not bother with synthetic highs when they could get the real deal.
In fact, compared to rest of the EU, young people in Portugal now use the least amount of "legal high" drugs like synthetic marijuana.
4. Additionally, drug-related crime also dropped, as did the number of people in prison for drug-related offences.
5. The number of people seeking medical help for the treatment of drug addiction rose a whopping 60 per cent between 1998 and 2011.
Drug traffickers still get sent to jail but users are referred for treatment. Photo / Getty Images
Taking the stigma away
Decriminalising drugs was only one part of a much broader process that included parallel harm reduction measures, including needle exchanges and opioid substitution treatments, using drugs such as methadone.
These additional measures meant that the country was able to hit the brakes on the spread of communicable diseases, even if the number of drug users were to increase (as it does sometimes, as the number naturally ebbs and flows according to the country's socio-economic circumstances).
"People use drugs for one of two reasons - either to potentiate pleasures or relieve unpleasure - and the types of drugs and the type of people who use drugs carries a lot according to the conditions of life in the country," Goulão told Vice last year.
"I think harm reduction is not giving up on people," said Goulão in the same interview. "I think it is respecting their timings and assuming that even if someone is still using drugs, that person deserves the investment of the state in order to have a better and longer life."
Because drugs are still illegal, dealers and traffickers are still sent to jail - only consumption is seen as a matter of public health. But the number of adults doing drugs has been steadily decreasing since they were decriminalised.
Goulão says the policy is not a "silver bullet" but "it has been very important because it introduced coherence into the whole system".
"If our responses are based on the idea that we talking about addiction, that we are talking about chronic disease, talking about a health issue - to have it out of the penal system is a clear improvement. It was really important for our society because it allowed us to drop the stigma."
However, not everyone in the country is supportive of the decriminalisation.
Dr Manuel Pinto Coelho, President of the Association for a Drug Free Portugal, says the move did not work.
"There is now in Portugal a trivialisation. It is more trivial then it was before. I'm not happy with this," he told The Huffington Post UK.
"I don't believe a society where people have addiction is part of life. There are people who are happy in the system, I believe in the treatment in the drug dependents and that it is possible to put a final part in their addiction. I believe that every system, every policy system, should have a final goal; life without drugs. I believe they can reach a life without drugs, I believe we have always to have to fight against cancer and poverty and unhappiness and hunger and drugs," he added.
Other figures show that there was a rise in the number of teens using drugs in the country. For cannabis use in particular, a report showed the number of teenage users had jumped from eight percent in 1995 to 19 percent in 2011.
Kiwis want cannabis legalised
Drugs in Portugal are not legal - that is very different to being decriminalised.
However, its data might shed some light into what would happen if cannabis were to be legalised in New Zealand.
A public referendum on legalising cannabis for personal use will be held before the 2020 election as part of the agreement between the Green and Labour parties.
However, a 1NEWS Colmar Brunton poll shows New Zealanders are still very divided on the issue. Out of a group of 1007 voters, just under half (47 percent) supported the legalisation of cannabis. A total of 41 percent voted against it while 12 percent said they were unsure.
Green Party leader James Shaw has also said that legalising cannabis has been party policy for 20 years, and the use of the substance should be a health issue, not a criminal justice issue.
