Talk:Drug policy of Portugal

Early discussion

Oh, am I the first one here? I wrote something here last night, but it didn't seem to stick...

Anyway, just in to say I'm deleting a reference because it's very inaccurate. It claims the main impact of Portugal's decriminalisation is that drug users are now not put in jail for using. Actually, Portugal very rarely put people in prison for using drugs even before 2001, so that has only affected a few dozen people a year, if that. The point of the exercise is something else completely, and other sources will cover this nicely. thanks. --Ronja R (talk) 21:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I seem to be ****ing up something when I edit, and when I try to fix it, it gets worse! Everything turns blue with a frame around it, and there is some trouble w headings as well. I'll try to look at it tomorrow if no-one comes around with a magic wand in the mean time...--Ronja R (talk) 22:59, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Thannks, Moderator, it looks a lot more normal now!:-)

I expanded the Harm reduction section, and took the liberty of removing the "Please expand"-thingy. --Ronja R (talk) 18:41, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The "results" section of this article has suspicious citations...they all point to an ambiguous 2008 report which is not possible to find on the website of the institution that supposedly authored this report. In fact, that website points to a different report (by Glenn Greenwald of CATO Institute) which has very different conclusions from the ones cited in the results section. I think this needs to be addressed. -- zachr523 (talk 9:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Not quite sure which citation(s) you are referring to, is it the Beckley report? A shortish time ago, the link for that report was broken. It turned out it had been accepted as a scientific article in the British journal of criminology. I redirected the link to there, but it seems it has since been turned back to the Beckley Institute. I'm a bit loathe to redirect it once more, as I expect it just will be reversed again. --Ronja R (talk) 16:28, 28 May 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronja R (talk • contribs) 16:19, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok, have checked links. I see it was the link to the IDT-report you were concerned about. The link is now fixed. --Ronja R (talk) 07:32, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Drug related homicide increased by 40% (2001 - 2006)**

This bullet point is highly inaccurate. The source provided, World Drug Report 2009 (http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_eng_web.pdf), refers, on page 168, to another source: Statistics in Focus: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-08-019/EN/KS-SF-08-019-EN.PDF

This particular source is a list of crime in general throughout Europe. The 40% increase in homicide in Portugal is not "Drug related homicide". The World Drug Report itself only speculates this increase as "a fact that might be related to the trafficking activity." (emphasis mine)

This increase in homicide is also an increase of about 40 murders per year.

Therefore, I am having this bullet removed as there is no empirical evidence that the increase in homicide rate is directly correlated to the change in Portugal's drug laws. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xipkadorth (talk • contribs) 03:48, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

In a country with less than one homicide every two weeks, it is not hard to know whether a killing is due to family violence, friends killing each other in a drunken row, or if it is gang/drug related. Thus, it seems likely that Portuguese authorities have not just "speculated" that these murders are related to trafficking activity. However, most of the trafficking activity in Portugal apparently gos through Cabo Verde, and the culprits are mainly West African drug smugglers. I am going to look into this closer, to see if there is a possible correlation to the country's drug policy, or if it seems to have more to do with other, more regional trends. --Ronja R (talk) 13:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I've now had time to read the report through —and I agree. It does needs to come out. On page 168 it does indeed say 'might' which makes it an unsubstantiated speculation by an unknown author of a collaborative work. Which I might add states at the beginning: This Report has not been formally edited. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNODC or contributory organizations and neither do they imply any endorsement. Also its wrong in its assumption in that 40% is significant. The murder rate would have to deviate by 5% or more, outside its normal rage of fluctuation to be regarded as such. So it is not surprising that the reference it gives (Statistics in Focus) states: General trend > tendency > ^^ > not discernible.

I've also looked at the figures provided by the Home Office (UK) for homicides before 2001 [1] From this it appears that 2001 saw a particularly low incidence of this type of crime. So this factoid really don't belong in the article. --Aspro (talk) 14:24, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Where drug selling is still prohibited, there is no reason to expect that homicides would decrease, or not necessarily increase, since most drug-related homicides are among those distributing, not consuming. Nicmart (talk) 03:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Results

This section needs a proper heading that's fitting in an encyclopaedia. 'Observations' or something. To suggest that the content of this section is the 'result' of a change of a policy, places such info firmly in the realms of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies. This was not a tightly controlled physics experiment -so we must not mislead people by such a heading as this.--Aspro (talk) 09:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Comparing the Portuguese figures with those of the UK, is I think informative. Aust, R., Sharp, C. and Goulden, C. (2002), Prevalence of Drug Use: Key Findings from the 2001/2002 British Crime Survey, Findings 182. London: Home Office. --Aspro (talk) 18:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Economist Milton Friedman noted that the national US homicide rate doubled during alcohol prohibition, and then fairly rapidly dropped by half after repeal. He felt that was compelling evidence that Prohibition was causative, and he wasn’t known for being illogical Nicmart (talk) 03:06, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

In what way? And why? I mean, why Britain in particular, whose drug use patterns are very different from all the rest of Europe.--Ronja R (talk) 22:05, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Table of therapeutic goods.

What is the relevance of putting the table in here? Formerly illegal drugs are not legalised in Portugal, aren't used therapeutically and cannot be bought at a pharmacy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronja R (talk • contribs) 22:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Lifetime measure of drug use is misleading

The article would be improved by replacing the lifetime drug use with data showing current use.Lifetime use can leave a false impression for 2 main reasons: 1 The removal of criminal sanctions can mean that because there may be no serious penalties for admitting to drug use the self-reported results may be more accurate where they might have been understated. 2 If one looks at the declining death rates for drug users in Portugal over the period since introduction of decriminalisation increased lifetime use could mean that there are more drug users alive to be able to report on their lifetime use.

180.200.141.111 (talk) 06:13, 21 November 2011 (UTC) Brian 21 Nov 2011

== Proposed merger ==

This article adds very little to what's already in Drug policy of Portugal; it doesn't really have any need to stand as a separate article. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

No. 'That' article.--Aspro (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Portugal 2001 decriminalization of drug use was split off from this article about a year ago, but it simply repeats what's already in this article, so I propose merging it back into this article (i.e., converting it to a redirect to this article) and removing the {{main}} reference to it in this article. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:07, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

"The amount of drugs seized increased in quantity"

"The amount of drugs seized increased in quantity" is most likely not related to the drug strategy, so I deleted it. Portugal is a major transit nation for drugs into Europe from Africa and Latin America, and it is estimated that 77 per cent of drugs seized in Portugal are destined for the external market (i.e. other European countries) Also, Cabo Verde is an important stop on the drug transit route between Africa and Latin America, and some of the great hauls were made there. This has little to do with Portugese internal affairs, and a lot more to do with international supply and demand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronja R (talk • contribs) 20:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

References

That’s also why it’s not unreasonable to expect that drug homicides, mostly connected to sales, would be high. Nicmart (talk) 03:07, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Amount Limits

It reads:

Amount limits of small amounts by law is:[citation needed]
40 g Hashish
3 g Heroin
5 g Cocaine,
30-50 doses of LSD - only punished if it is used in public (with a fine, 301 - 300 000 EUR)

I live in Portugal and found it really strange so I checked it.

The law states that it's not a crime if the person is not carrying more than 10 times the "maximum quantitative daily average limit" (not sure if it's the right translation) of a substance. The daily average limit is 50 micrograms for lsd whereas a normal dose is 100 tipically 100 micrograms. There also doesn't seem nothing differentiating LSD consumption from other drugs and found no suggestion that it is only published if it's used in public.

The hashish daily dose is 0.5g, thus 5g is the legal limit (it makes a clear distinction between the plant, hashish and oil)

The law also makes a distinction between the cocaine chloridrate from freebase which the daily doses are are 0,2 and 0,003 respectively.

As for heroin, the daily dose is 0,1g

2.80.105.89 (talk) 06:07, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I'll remove it until anybody confirms. 82.155.126.198 (talk) 23:36, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Drug policy of Portugal

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Drug policy of Portugal's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Emdrug":

• From Harm reduction: EMCDDA:Drug policy profiles, Portugal, June 2011
• From Legality of cannabis by country: "EMCDDA:Drug policy profiles, Portugal". Emcdda.europa.eu. 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2011-12-14.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 02:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

They are identical. Evolife (talk) 14:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Organization

I'm completely baffled by the organization of this article. It jumps from subject to subject with little or no coherence. Shouldn't the article be very roughly organized into top level sections on current policy, history, health effects, support, and criticism, or somesuch? --Nstrauss (talk) 05:01, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

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War on Drugs?

How can the US learn from these policies? and is there any way we would ever be able to implement them in the US? Sebastiandulanto (talk) 18:54, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

The best drug policy I have ever heard of. Addiction treated as it should be not a crime but a mental health problem.

Gary E Rose (talk) 19:00, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Mess

This entry is a muddled mess. This is not up to wikipedia standards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.226.229.87 (talk • contribs) 01:39, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Whether the policy has been effective: more info needed

Para 1 of the lede has it that the policy was introduced in order to reduce the rate of new HIV infections. The only area of discussion of this in terms of outcomes is in the Observations section, where there is one sentence only. Here it is:

"Reduction in new HIV diagnoses amongst drug users by 17%[18] and a general drop of 90% in drug-related HIV infection."

A: I can't read anything in the link beyond a title page,

B: the "90% drop" phrase needs some clarification, as there is a possible conflict with the first phrase,

C: there's no citation for the "90% drop" phrase. Boscaswell talk 20:37, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Having read some of the papers linked in the citations, I must say...

this page is a disaster. Stryker Genesis (talk) 14:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Will there ever be any updates?

So many people are complaining about this page, but no one has really cared enough to do anything about it. 172.84.153.6 (talk) 19:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Many possible reference links

See the article section on this page:

• http://cannabis.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Portugal._Cannabis-related_links#Articles

--Timeshifter (talk) 13:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Table and chart added to article

See: User:Timeshifter/Sandbox203

See diff. I added these to the article:

Drug overdose death rates for European countries.

• Row numbers below are static. Other columns are sortable. This allows ranking of any column.
• Location links below are "Healthcare in LOCATION" links.

Drug overdose deaths per year.

Location	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017
Austria	235	191	196	184	154
Belgium			168	152	148
Bulgaria	20	24	11	24	18
Croatia	77	99	97	85	65
Cyprus	10	6	5	12	16
Czech Republic	64	58	42	39	42
Denmark		197	202	183	239
Estonia	39	33	27	39	110
Finland	287	258	234	261	200
France					417
Germany	1,826	1,581	1,398	1,276	1,272
Greece			230	274	255
Hungary	42	48	43	33	33
Ireland					235
Italy	293	309	374	336	297
Latvia	17	21	12	20	22
Lithuania	62	47	52	59	83
Luxembourg	5	6	8	4	8
Malta	5			3	5
Netherlands	298	295	252	224	262
Norway	241	324	275	286	247
Poland		229	212	199	202
Portugal		63	72	55	51
Romania	30	33	45	26	32
Slovakia	28	37	34	32	19
Slovenia	65	70	74	59	47
Spain		774	546	450	437
Sweden	450	524	555	583	643
Turkey		314	342	657	941
United Kingdom					3,284

References

--Timeshifter (talk) 14:09, 9 September 2023 (UTC)