Portugal starts to realize its mistake on drugs

When Oregon voters were sold the bill of goods on drug decriminalization – the fatal error known at the time as Measure 110 – the proponents couldn't stop babbling about Portugal. "Portugal decriminalized drugs, and it works."

Well, now we see from the Washington Post that no, it isn't working. The bleak scene in Portuguese cities is starting to look uncannily like the one in Portland. And apparently they haven't been dealing much with fentanyl yet. Wait 'til that gets there.

“These days in Portugal, it is forbidden to smoke tobacco outside a school or a hospital. It is forbidden to advertise ice cream and sugar candies. And yet, it is allowed for [people] to be there, injecting drugs,” said Rui Moreira, Porto’s mayor. “We’ve normalized it.”...

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.... 

But in the first substantial way since decriminalization passed, some Portuguese voices are now calling for a rethink of a policy that was long a proud point of national consensus. Urban visibility of the drug problem, police say, is at its worst point in decades and the state-funded nongovernmental organizations that have largely taken over responding to the people with addiction seem less concerned with treatment than affirming that lifetime drug use should be seen as a human right....

Of two dozen street people who use drugs and were asked by The Post, not one said they’d ever appeared before one of Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, envisioned as conduits to funnel people with addiction into rehab. Police were observed passing people using drugs, not bothering to cite them — a step that is supposed to lead to registration for appearances before those commissions.

“Why?” replied one officer when asked why people were not being cited and referred to commissions. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak with the press. “Because we know most of them. We’ve registered them before. Nothing changes if we take them in.” 

Read the whole thing here. (May the paywall gods be with you.)

The people of Oregon really do need to force a repeal of Measure 110 onto the ballot, and the sooner the better. Because the bobbleheads we send to Salem – and I'm looking at people who should know better, like Kate Lieber, Lew Frederick, Michael Dembrow – are perfectly fine with the status quo and aren't going to change it in any meaningful way.

There is no way to solve the drug addiction crisis without the involvement of the criminal justice system. It's never been done, and it's never going to be done – including in Portugal. Let's get real.