Decriminalizing Drugs Saves Lives — Here’s How It Works
Yes, even for Heroin
American drug policy is changing, but not radically enough. Take Portugal: it decriminalized all drugs (yes, even Heroin) 20 years ago — with great success!
Anti-drug laws: a short history
In a way, the first law in human history was a drug law: God prohibited Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. When they still did so, they were punished for it by the authority, namely by God the Lord. This model — prohibition and sanction — is still followed by most states today.
About 200 years ago, in the middle of the 19th century, some Western countries enacted the first modern anti-drug laws. One of the first of these was the Opium Den Ordinance of 1875, made at the height of the anti-Chinese hysteria in San Francisco. It prohibited the consumption of opium, which was almost exclusively used by the Chinese community brought to America to build railroads. For the Chinese in America, opium was an important part of social life. Its consumption didn’t harm the users or their social life, on the contrary: it actually defined it.
Thus, this early modern drug law wasn’t a measure to combat possible drug-related problems, but rather a political weapon. It was enacted in order to destroy the American-Chinese community’s in daily social interaction defined by the culturally formative opium smoking. Among lawmakers, there was also a fear of Chinese customs and traditions — which were perceived as foreign and strange — rubbing off on the American population:
“Many women and young girls, as well as young men of respectable family, were being introduced to visit the Chinese opium-smoking dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise”.
Other forms of taking morphine, for example, morphine solutions sold as medicine, consumed mainly by white Americans, were not affected by the ban.
Prohibition and war on drugs
Other significant moments in the history of drug policy included the Opium Wars between Great Britain and China in the 18th century and the “Noble Experiment” of alcohol prohibition started in 1920 in the USA. This experiment failed in a frightening way and was aborted 13 years later.
In the meantime, there had been an increase in crime (+13%), more than
10,000 cases of alcohol poisoning (alcoholic beverages were now illegally produced by amateurish “moonshiners” and were no longer subject to controls, thus dropping dangerously in quality). Most seriously, however, the Prohibition resulted in the emergence of organised crime on a scale never seen before: Mafia boss Al Capone’s criminal empire was based on the illegal sale of alcohol.
It doesn’t seem that any lessons were learned from this. In 1972, US President Richard Nixon began the War on Drugs. It continues to this day, costing at least 50 billion US dollars and tens of thousands human lives annually. The War on Drugs was defined by Nobel laureate and former president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, as “perhaps more harmful than all the wars in the world combined.”
In an interview with CNN, John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s top advisors, said:
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,”
It is obvious that drug policy has always been, and is especially today — or more precisely since 1972 — an important aspect of politics and world affairs.
Minorities are discriminated against, its young members put in jail, families are destroyed and whole countries are destabilized: all in the name of drug safety.
Portugal’s successful drug policy
In Portugal, as in many other places in the world, at the beginning of the new millennium, the situation in station neighborhoods, prisons, and rehab facilities: Heroin, a refined form of opium, despite its strict prohibition, was causing great casualties in society.
In 2001, Portugal changed its policy from a violent prohibition of drugs to a
complete decriminalization of all drugs, including heroin. The law is still
in force today.
On July 1st, 2001, Law 30/2000 officially entered into force. It led to a decriminalization of the consumption, possession and purchase of all previously prohibited substances. The permitted amount of each drug is as large as the ten-day personal need.
There are two main characteristics of this legal change: An end to criminal sanctions as punishment for the possession of illegal drugs; and the Introduction of the CDTs, the “Commissions for the Deterrence of Drug Addiction”.
People who are found in possession of drugs will be delivered to this new institution within 72 hours. The police no longer have the right to arrest people who have been found in possession of drugs. They can only pass them on to the CDTs. In these commissions, social workers and medical and legal experts work together. The main function of CDTs is to encourage addicts to start therapy. Non-addicted consumers can be sanctioned with social services or bans from certain public places.
The data says it works!
Many studies have been conducted researching the effects of Portuguese drug laws. They speak for themselves: the number of drug-related deaths in Portugal in 1999, two years before Decriminalization, was 350. In contrast, 98 drug-related deaths were recorded in 2003. This is a 59% reduction.
In 1999, 2.5% of all young people between 16 and 19 years used Heroin, in 2003 it was only 1.8%. The number of HIV patients who were infected by IV Heroin use also decreased: minus 17% between 1999 and 2003.
In contrast, cannabis use among 16–19-year-old teenagers increased from 9.4% (1999) to 15.1% (2003). It should be noted, however, that the use of drugs was a big taboo subject before 2001, and may have therefore been concealed by the respondents. Since 200, users now talk more openly about their use.
This might explain this increase in Cannabis consumers. Furthermore, a considerable relief of the judicial system has been shown, since no consumers have been prosecuted since 2001. Instead, justice and police could focus on drug dealers, and not drug users. The once notoriously overcrowded prisons have experienced relief since 2001.
A global rethinking
In recent years, more and more countries seem to have recognized the success of Portugal’s drug policy, or more generally any other approach to the issue of drugs. Recently, the Norwegian Parliament announced the decision to follow the example of Portugal decriminalize all drugs. States like Uruguay and Canada went, at least as far as cannabis is concerned, one step further and legalized the drug completely, as did several US states.
Oregon and Colorado are even considering legalizing psilocybin, the active substance of so-called magic mushrooms, while the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, has given MDMA-assisted psychotherapy the status of “Breakthrough Therapy”. A legalization of MDMA, which is also known under its street name Ecstasy, seems close, at least for medical purposes.
These and other recent developments show the global rethinking that has taken place in recent years in the area of drug laws. If and when this also spills over into American federal law and a worldwide rethinking, remains unclear.
One thing, however, is clear: Portuguese drug policy has, since 2001, empirically proven to be more effective in curbing drug use than traditional prohibitionist drug policy.
