How many countries decriminalized drugs

Pressure on the criminal justice system appears reduced as fewer people are charged with drug offences and enter prison. Back to Decriminalisation vs legalisation. International models Differences in culture, the availability of treatment and support services for drug-related issues, problems with accurate and consistent data collection, and variation between models of decriminalisation make evaluative comparisons between countries challenging.

Portugal All drugs were decriminalised in on the advice of a multi-disciplinary expert committee. Conflicting claims have been made about the outcomes of the Portuguese model. If you decriminalize and do nothing else, things will get worse.

The most important part was making treatment available to everybody who needed it for free. This was our first goal. Legal Information Access Centre. Chapter 4: What the law deals with. Library Council of New South Wales; The impact of drug policy liberalisation on willingness to seek help for problem drug use: A comparison of 20 countries. International Journal of Drug Policy. Journal of Public Health Policy.

Hughes C, Stevens A. The effects of decriminalization of drug use in Portugal: Discussion paper. Laws that criminalize key populations or discriminate against people living with HIV undermine efforts to prevent new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths in dozens of countries across all regions.

Decriminalization of drug use and possession for personal use reduces the stigma and discrimination that hampers access to health care, harm reduction and legal services. Nothing was working. On the other side of the Atlantic, the U. But in , Portugal took a radical step. It became the first country in the world to decriminalize the consumption of all drugs. Seventeen years on, the U. In alone, an estimated 64, Americans died from opioid overdoses—more than the combined death tolls for Americans in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq Wars.

In Portugal, meanwhile, the drug-induced death rate has plummeted to five times lower than the E. Its rate of HIV infection has dropped from Drug use has declined overall among the to year-old population , those most at risk of initiating drug use. But at the same time, he says, there are lessons to be learned from the approach of treating drug addiction as a medical issue rather than a criminal problem. For starters, its crisis escalated extraordinarily quickly. After four decades of authoritarian rule , during which it was impossible to even buy a Coca Cola, Portugal opened to the world in , perhaps embracing freedom and new markets a little too enthusiastically.

Soldiers returned to Portugal from ex-colonies with a variety of drugs, just as borders opened up for travel and trade. So many years of isolation had left the country poorly equipped to tackle the influx of drugs, and it lacked adequate knowledge about the social and health risks of different drugs.

The culture of liberation soon spiraled into a crisis. Jump to navigation. A new web-tool launched this month shows that 49 countries and jurisdictions across the world have adopted some form of decriminalisation for drug use and possession for personal use. Experts say the number of jurisdictions turning to this policy option is likely to increase in the coming years.

For help with terminology, check out our Decrim Glossary. Twenty-nine countries or 49 jurisdictions have adopted this approach in recognition that the criminalisation of people who use drugs is a failed policy, disproportionately targeting people living in poverty, people of colour and young people, and causing untold damage.