What Happened When Portugal Decriminalized Drugs?

"The government in Portugal has no plans to back down. Although the Netherlands is the European country most associated with liberal drug laws, it has already been ten years since Portugal became the first European nation to take the brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders—from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between. This controversial move went into effect in June of 2001, in response to the country's spiraling HIV/AIDS statistics. While many critics in the poor and largely conservative country attacked the sea change in drug policy, fearing it would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country's already shockingly high rate of hard drug use, a report published in 2009 by the Cato Institute tells a different story. Glenn Greenwald, the attorney and author who conducted the research, told Time: "Judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country."

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/151635/...

Cenk Uygur discusses the study and what we can learn from it.

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[Tripnotik25]

Tu és tão português como eu sou chinês lol.

Storm? sabes o que é um clima temperado? pois tá dificil aprenderes.

And we haven't been dragging ANYONES economy down, if that was the case we would have been cut from the EU years ago. Its the other way around you turd, we are being imposed with debt we never owed, EU NEEDS the Portugals, and Greeces, irelands, or it will just crumble. Go learn something, and stop saying you're Portuguese, to anyone.

[grinningchicken]

But should we legalize drugs then what would be the excuse to harass and lock up minorities?

Think of the private prisons which would go out of business.

[Tripnotik25]

Pára de alimentar estas merdas. Deixa andar.

[Elvio Neto]

YOU are from a POOR island from Portugal... you will never know how the main continent (Portugal) is you idiot... :)

[Van Si Fudere]

Fuck you very much!!!! Bwaahahahahhaa

[Van Si Fudere]

Fuck you very much!!!

[Tripnotik25]

lol. Silly troll is silly. Typical US idiot haha. So many of you, you lose count at some point.

Both countries respect each other. Just a couple months ago, thousands of Spaniards were protesting against the crisis in their country in the middle of Madrid, while singing in Portuguese.

Thats good enough for me. You can go back to trolling then haha.