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In 1971, President Richard Nixon proclaimed drug abuse ‘public enemy number one’ in the United States. Ever since that time the policy of ‘War on Drugs’ has directed the political mindset of the United States. The basis for Nixon’s argument was that the best way to prevent further drug use would be the eradication of available drugs through strict policing and creating harsh consequences for people who do use or sell drugs.
Today we know why the aggressive prosecution and criminalization of drug users are not helping the affected communities but hurting our societies and economy overall by wasting money and encouraging a hostile and judgmental public opinion of addicts, and what other approaches can be taken to tackle the problem of drug abuse and trafficking.
Since the early 80s, many countries have been gripped by so-called opioid epidemics or opioid-involved overdose crises. Most of the affected countries initially turned to a strategy of criminalization and incarceration to try to manage drug use and distribution. America was the poster child for aggressive anti-drug policies.
In recent years, it has become abundantly clear that this war on drugs policy has failed catastrophically and has created more problems than it attempted to solve. The war on drugs was supposed to reduce the abuse and distribution of selected drugs, but study after study has concluded that it’s a failure and that treatment, not arrest and prison, is the way to combat drug abuse. It has been estimated to have caused about 10,000 homicides per year, over 100,000 people are incarcerated for simply possessing (not selling) illicit drugs, and it costs an estimated $50 billion a year. The whole approach to combat drugs in America is a superficial attempt to contain a situation by treating the symptoms but ignoring the underlying cause. When looking at the way the American justice system is set up to treat people who were caught with drugs or addicts, it becomes clear that the system demonizes any individual that is associated with drugs.
A close-to-perfect case study of a different approach is how Portugal dealt with a drug crisis that began in the 80s and reached its peak in 2001. This saw at some point 1 in every 100 Portuguese battling problems with heroin addiction, HIV rates shoot through the roof, and deaths through overdose reach alarming rates. These are many of the same and even more severe problems that the United States had to deal with. In response to this emergency, Portugal launched a decriminalization program in 2001 that saw an unprecedented change happen over the coming years. Deaths related to overdose fell by 80 percent, while the rate of users with new HIV infections fell from 52 percent in 2000 to 7 percent in 2015. Rates of harmful drug use and incarcerations related to drug use have also fallen, while more people entered voluntary treatment for substance abuse. The crisis soon steadied. HIV infection fell from an all-time high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to only 4.2 cases per million in 2015. The data from this recovery has been studied and named as evidence by many harm reduction experts throughout the world.
Portugal’s extraordinary recovery and the fact that the policy and general course of action has endured several changes in government – including conservative leaders who would have preferred to return to the American policy of war on drugs – could not have happened without an enormous cultural shift and a change in how the country viewed drugs and addiction. The official policy of decriminalization was merely a reflection of change that was already happening in hospitals, pharmacies, and around kitchen tables across the country. The official policy of decriminalization made it easier for many official services like health, psychiatry, employment, housing, etc., which were having a hard time working together more effectively to serve their communities. So, the process that took place in Portugal in the years leading up to the climax in 2001 and following is a process that did not originate from policymakers, but from ordinary people who set up small-scale operations such as clean needle stations, HIV testing, counseling groups, street workers teams, and they succeeded because the officials recognized their efforts and chose to support them instead of returning to criminalization and incarceration.
After evaluating these two unlike methods and mindsets that stand behind these two different approaches to solving drug crises, it becomes clear that it is not possible to change from a vindictive and criminalizing policy to a decriminalizing and understanding one without a fundamental change in society and public opinion. It is ultimately about understanding that people who suffer from drug abuse are not perpetrators, but victims, and need to be helped and understood, not incarcerated.
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