Is Decriminalisation Enough? Drug User Community Voices from Portugal

Jay Levy, Rui Miguel Coimbra Morais

Issue
Portugal’s model of decriminalisation has been hugely influential. However, interest in – and advocacy for – the Portuguese model of decriminalisation does not tend to go much further than analysing HIV prevalence, incidence, and drug-related deaths.

Setting
INPUD, the International Network of People who Use Drugs, has conducted consultations in Porto, Portugal, with Portugal’s drug user rights organisation, CASO. This presentation explores the results of these consultations. This is the first community-driven evaluation of the outcomes of Portugal’s decriminalisation of people who use drugs. The presentation explores on-the-ground outcomes and impacts of Portugal’s policy of decriminalisation.

Key Arguments
Portugal’s decriminalisation of people who use drugs has had substantial and substantive positive impacts upon health and wellbeing of people who use drugs. However, people who use drugs are not fully decriminalised in Portugal: people who use drugs are still stopped, searched, and harassed by the police. Additionally, prohibition has not ended in Portugal: people still use drugs of unknown purity and content – drugs that can be dangerously strong and/or contain dangerous and/or toxic contaminants. Moreover, decriminalisation has not put an end to entrenched violence, discrimination, and stigmatisation from police, service and healthcare providers, and from the community at large. Understandings of people who use drugs as sick and disempowered have also informed a Portuguese desire for abstinence-orientated drug legislation and policy: those found to be in possession of drugs are sent to compulsory dissuasion committees.

Outcome and Implications
In discussion of drug policy reform, while positive outcomes of partial decriminalisation should be emphasised, failings must also be stressed. The Portuguese model of decriminalisation is an important first step, but it is not the end point. This presentation will emphasise the ways forward in progressing the Portuguese model towards the realisation of the rights of people who use drugs.