by Martin Robbins

Back in 2001, the Portuguese government defied stiff opposition from right-wing groups to decriminalise drug use, making drug laws far more liberal than even the Netherlands.

The right predicted Bad Things: Drug use would explode, tourists would travel from far and wide to get high on the streets of Lisbon, law and order would collapse, and people would start riding around in modified cars and fighting in Thunderdomes. The reality was quite different as two reports published in the last 18 months have demonstrated, the Libertarian Cato Institute have declared the policy an undisputed success on the basis of a report by Glenn Greenwald, and this has been a popular assessment among liberal people.

How correct is it though? Let’s look at the evidence.



The changes were made in July 2001, and it’s important to be clear about what they mean. The new law decriminalised the use, possession and acquisition of all illicit substances for persona use. This is not the same as legalisation. What it meant was that the legal response to drug use would be changed. Instead of penal punishments – fines or prison – users would be referred to “Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction” (Comissões para a Dissuasão da Toxicodependência – CDTs).

These CDTs are panels made up of three people – a social worker, legal advisor and medical professional – supported by technical experts. The police refer people caught in possession to the panel, and the panels work to institute sanctions designed to help the offender with their drug problem. In short, the system is designed to redefine drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal issue.

It’s also important to realise that this wasn’t a policy implemented in isolation. At the same time, a wide range of public health initiative were brought in, for example increasing the size of drug-treatment programs, and improving drug awareness education in schools. On the law and order front, the strategy of the police became more focused on the drug trafficking network – dealers and distributors.

It was partly because things were looking so bad that the government were able to push through such a radical agenda. Anyway, let’s take a look at Greenwald’s assessment of the situation in 2009 for the Cato Institute.

As you would expect from a Libertarian organisation, the Cato report is eager to present the case that the decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal has been a complete success story, and I’ll be honest, they have a good case. Greenwald excitedly concludes from his analysis of the data that:

“The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world.”

The problem with Greenwald’s Cato report is that his analysis of the facts starts to get rather muddled. Consider this extract on adolescent and post-adolescent age-groups:

“Prevalence rates for the 15–24 age group have increased only very slightly, whereas the rates for the critical 15–19 age group—critical because such a substantial number of young citizens begin drug usage during these years—have actually decreased in absolute terms since decriminalization. “Perhaps most strikingly, while prevalence rates for the period from 1999 to 2005, for the 16–18 age group, increased somewhat for cannabis (9.4 to 15.1 percent) and for drugs generally (12.3 to 17.7 percent), the prevalence rate decreased during that same period for heroin (2.5 to 1.8 percent), the substance that Portuguese drug officials believed was far and away the most socially destructive.”

What the above basically demonstrates is that if you cherry-pick the right start years and end years for an age-group, you can get almost any result you want. I’ve also picked on this quote because it’s a good example of some of the wordplay used in the report. An increase of over 60% in cannabis use and 40% in general drug use is described as “increased somewhat”, and notice the slightly subjective selection of heroin as the most important variable.

In short, while the liberal side of me really wants to believe the Cato report, I’m not convinced.

The more sober and scientific Beckley foundation report from 2007. They present the same data, and agree with the Cato report that while cannabis use has increased, heroin use has decreased, there has been an increase in people seeking drug treatment, and a decrease in drug-related deaths. Additionally they make the observation that:

“Decriminalization has enabled earlier intervention and more targeted and therapeutic responses to drug users, increased collaboration across a network of services and the increased attention to adopting policies that work. This is perceived to be reducing the level of current and future drug use and harm.”

Naturally, liberal, libertarian and left-leaning commentators have leapt on these results as evidence of two things: that Portugal’s drug policies have worked; and that they should be implemented elsewhere. I really want to agree with this, but on the basis of the evidence presented this can’t be demonstrated.

Problem with Cato’s conclusions

There are two basic problems which mean that the science cannot yet support the conclusions that the Cato institute have enthusiastically drawn from the Portuguese experiment.

The first point is that there have been genuine problems with this policy. Yes, the situation with heroin has improved, but at the same time use of some other drugs has increased, and there is some suspicion that occasional drug use may have increased. There’s also the cost in terms of money, manpower and resources: even those in favour of the current policy have conceded that state infrastructure has not kept pace with things like the increase in the numbers of people seeking treatment.

The second and even bigger issue is the role of natural variation in drug use. One of the mantras of science is that correlation does not imply causation – just because certain metrics of drug use changed after 2001, it does not logically follow that drugs policies must have been the cause.

There is actually precious little evidence that drugs policies significantly affect the use of drugs, or if so to what extent. Even measuring drug use accurately is difficult, and it’s unlikely that any of the figures presented are particularly accurate. This makes the conclusions of the Cato report unscientific and unfounded.

But there are a couple of other points that liberals can take hold of and pursue.

The first is that right-wing groups predicted disaster when the laws were liberalised, and this simply did not happen. Drug use in many categories decreased, and while it increased in some areas (notably cannabis), these increases were far too small to offset the overall trend, which has been downwards. Heroin was a major problem, along with the transmission of HIV through dirty needles, but the rates of both heroin use and HIV infection in drug users have decreased.

Nor has it happened in other countries that have taken steps towards liberalising drugs laws. It’s time for this myth to die a death, and for the right-wing to find better arguments.

The second is that there has been a great surge of Portuguese people seeking treatment for drug-related problems. This may have put a strain on social and health services, but with adequate funding clearly this is a positive effect that would be good to replicate elsewhere.

Unfortunately, with a Labour party that seems to thrive on authority, and a Conservative party waiting to come into power next year, it’s an experiment that we’re unlikely to see conducted in the UK any time soon. Which is a shame, because more empirical evidence is one thing our drugs policy could really do with.

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Got ideas for next week’s column? Find me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Update: LeftOutside has further reading following on from this article.