Portugal's drug policy pays off; US eyes lessons

[The Straight Story]

Portugal's drug policy pays off; US eyes lessons

LISBON, Portugal -- These days, Casal Ventoso is an ordinary blue-collar community - mothers push baby strollers, men smoke outside cafes, buses chug up and down the cobbled main street.

Ten years ago, the Lisbon neighborhood was a hellhole, a "drug supermarket" where some 5,000 users lined up every day to buy heroin and sneaked into a hillside honeycomb of derelict housing to shoot up. In dark, stinking corners, addicts - some with maggots squirming under track marks - staggered between the occasional corpse, scavenging used, bloody needles.

....

Now, the United States, which has waged a 40-year, $1 trillion war on drugs, is looking for answers in tiny Portugal, which is reaping the benefits of what once looked like a dangerous gamble. White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske visited Portugal in September to learn about its drug reforms, and other countries - including Norway, Denmark, Australia and Peru - have taken interest, too.

...

Drugs in Portugal are still illegal. But here's what Portugal did: It changed the law so that users are sent to counseling and sometimes treatment instead of criminal courts and prison. The switch from drugs as a criminal issue to a public health one was aimed at preventing users from going underground.

Other European countries treat drugs as a public health problem, too, but Portugal stands out as the only one that has written that approach into law. The result: More people tried drugs, but fewer ended up addicted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122600610.html

[jody]

1. War on drugs will never be won. Surrender and find ways to deal with the issue. n/t

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. Eyes lessons to prevent it from happening here.

:think:

[DCKit]

3. Prevention, or the cure?

There's a lot of money in criminalization.

I'm not hopeful.

[MH1]

4. "More people tried drugs"

that will make it an uphill battle to try this in the US, given our excess of the hyper-moralistic religious wrong.

[dflprincess]

5. Sounds like a great approach

but, sadly, it comes from Europe, and the U.S. has a real hard time learning anything from other countries so I fear it won't get far here. The whole thing just reeks of being too liberal and progressive.

Besides, every American knows drug abuse isn't a public health issue, is a moral failure. This is just another step in the road to socialized medicine. :sarcasm: