Portugal decriminalised personal drug possession in 2001. We should not expect the impact to immediately present. It takes years and often decades for these policies to affect change. How do you know it’s the reduced funding of rehab programs and not the decriminalisation which caused this issue? Especially given the low success rate of rehab programs.
Interestingly, the opinion of one who reportedly lived there[0] suggests it’s sort of “endemic” in the culture and that government policy (including decriminalization) has had relatively little effect as compared to the decisions made by citizens.
Of particular interest to note is the commenter’s perception that this spike is less bad as in the 90s. Not trying to draw any conclusions based on this but it seems just as presumptive to believe that decriminalization has had this negative effect, regardless of how long it takes to “kick in” so to speak.
Even if respondents were unbiased and truthful. That sounds like a useless metric to me. You need a metric of the harm to society. Drug motivated violent crime for example.
We also need a metric of harm to the individuals who are doing the drugs. If they're doing less severe drugs with less adulterants for a cheaper price (less need to turn to theft) with medical support then it could still be a win even if % usage is up.
> Overdose rates have hit 12-year highs and almost doubled in Lisbon from 2019 to 2023. Sewage samples in Lisbon show cocaine and ketamine detection is now among the highest in Europe, with elevated weekend rates suggesting party-heavy usage. In Porto, the collection of drug-related debris from city streets surged 24 percent between 2021 and 2022, with this year on track to far outpace the last. Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, a rise police blame partly on increased drug use.
> overdoses this year in Portland, the state’s largest city, have surged 46 percent.
> Residents have launched U.S.-style neighborhood watches and hired private security guards — something exceedingly rare in Europe.
> After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.
> Why did it take nearly a decade to happen, then happen all at once?
Well, by that logic clearly decriminalization wasn't the cause. Why would the negative effect take nearly two decades to happen, then happen all at once? Seems like something else changed more recently than the decriminalization in 2001.
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Snarkiness aside, I find these discussions on HN to be mostly pointless and circular, precisely for this reason. There's very little actually substantive discussion happening under this article. A trend was noticed, one side has an explanation, the other side says "nah, I don't think that's it" and then we go in circles saying "hmmm... doesn't sound convincing to me" and meme a bit about Singapore and Seattle. It's HN at its worst.
That this comment exists almost immediately after another comment further upstream saying "well, of course we wouldn't expect to see the negative effects of decriminalization immediately" to me sums up how entirely arbitrary online arguments about decriminalization often are.
What does Portland (Oregon?) have to do with Portugal?
> Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022
I wonder what else changed between 2021 and 2022 that could have caused robbery in public spaces to spike.
So many things have changed in Portugal over the last decade, Lisbon and Porto in particular, that looking just at drug policy is insufficient. In particular, cost of living and immigration from poorer countries (both correlated with “number of desperate people”) have risen significantly.
You are right, but the metric of total drug use, or first time use, is only a proxy for the goal of reducing drug-related harm to society and individuals. From what I’ve seen it’s not a great proxy.
For instance, Sweden implemented an extremely restrictive drug policy focused on scaring people from trying drugs at all, at the expense of existing users who were shunned and penalized harshly. It now has one of the highest overdose mortality rates in Europe and a well-known gang violence problem that’s unprecedented in its history or in any of the otherwise similar countries.
I personally think these “clever” policies where you try to optimize for a proxy metric are just moralistic and unscientific garbage. Not to mention the consequences of giving the task (and the funding) to the criminal justice system first. If we transferred the issues of smoking cessation or alcoholism to the police, what would we expect to happen?
I think they're still illegal, but personal use is permitted. That's what I understand from having been there recently, anyway, but happy to stand corrected on that point if anyone knows more than this.
When they fully funded their rehab and social service program, the system worked.
Then they reduced funding and seem surprised the programs don’t work any more.