Portugal, twenty years on
In 2001 Portugal was losing people to heroin at one of the worst rates in Europe. It decriminalized possession of everything and moved drug use from the courts to health panels. Two decades later, overdose deaths are among the lowest in Western Europe, HIV transmission collapsed, and the prisons aren’t full of users. It is the longest-running natural experiment we have, and it worked.
We are the reformers who watched the drug war waste a half-century and a generation of mostly poor, mostly Black men in cages for a public-health problem. Criminalizing a person who uses does not reduce use; it adds a record, a barrier to housing and work, and a reason to hide from the one system that could help. The supply never even flinched.
The prohibitionists wave Oregon at us. We’ll wave it back: Oregon decriminalized and then didn’t fund the treatment it promised. That’s not our model failing — that’s half our model. Portugal spent the savings on clinics. Oregon spent them on a press release.
Where we concede ground: Decriminalization without funded treatment on day one is a recipe for the chaos Oregon got. We undersold how hard the second half is.
What would change our mind: If a place decriminalized AND fully funded treatment and still saw use and overdose climb against a control over five years.
Read the full synthesis: What does sensible drug policy look like?