By: Sabrina Sousa

The biggest opposing argument about drug decriminalization is the belief that it will cause drug usage to increase because it will become more accessible. What if this argument was statistically proven wrong?
About the Research Study:
A research entry, Drug Decriminalization and the Price of Illicit Drugs, published in The International Journal of Drug Policy by Sónia Félix in 2016 uses evidence to dig deeper into how drug decriminalization impacted Portugal.
The research study first gives a brief history about the drug problem, more specifically the heroin problem that took place in Portugal. It states how Portugal’s decision to depenalize drugs was believed to eliminate the stigma and promote a safety and health driven policy.
The study explores that the supply of drugs remained the same, but the price did not decrease which means that the decriminalization did not make drugs more widely accessible. According to the research entry, this is contrary to the initial beliefs because most countries believe not penalizing drugs will increase the usage due to more accessibility.
What Changed My Mind?
Drug decriminalization is a controversial topic, usually people either are completely in support of it or completely against it. Although there are many studies on how decriminalizing can affect a country there is no research on illicit drugs and how the supply and demand is changed by the lack of punishment. This study was difficult due to it being hard to track illicit drug sales, supply, and demand because of its illegal nature.
I had no idea that the study of drug pricing had never been done before and it was merely assumed that drug prices got lower and drug usage when up. From the amount of articles and people that believe that decriminalization will increase drug use, I thought it would have been a proven belief.
The research paper has changed my mind on the topic by showing me that pricing of the drugs did not decrease, which means that it is not more accessible and is therefore, proving the fact that drug usage does not increase once drugs are no longer criminalized.

How It Changed My Mind?
The biggest argument against drug decriminalization is that it will increase and encourage drug usage. However, this article proved that pricing did not decrease and therefore, usage will not increase.
The research study talks about how many factors were overlooked including price, when attempting to find out how drug decriminalization affects Portugal and how it will affect future countries who also decide to follow in Portugal’s drug policy footsteps. This lack of information has caused people to assume things about decriminalization based off what makes sense to them.
In other words people have been immediately assuming that if drugs are decriminalized then prices will increase and more people will have access to it. The study explains that prices have stayed constant and when there is a constant supply there is going to be higher prices, and when there is a constant demand there is also going to be higher prices. Therefore, the constant prices of illicit drugs means that there has not been a dramatic increase in the demand, supply, or usage after decriminalization.
Debunking the Opposition
With all the arguments explaining that drug decriminalization will make prices decrease and drug use increase, I thought there would be evidence on it. However, there is no evidence on it because organizations never used their time to form a research study because of the difficulty of doing a study based on illicit drugs.
This study directly attacks the view that drug usage will increase when drugs are not criminalized based on pricing. In my upcoming paper I will try to find more research studies that debunk opposing arguments in order to further prove how decriminalization could be beneficial to the United States.
Works Cited
Félix, Sónia, and Pedro Portugal. “Drug Decriminalization and the Price of Illicit Drugs.” International Journal of Drug Policy 39 (2017): 121–29. Web.