Greens Senator Richard Di Natale has taken some time out of a (self-funded) European family holiday to check out Portugal’s oft-lauded policy in dealing with drugs, which treats individual drug use as a health issue, rather than a criminal one.
He’s now calling on bipartisan support to overhaul Australia’s drug policy to be more like Portugal’s, telling Fairfax:
“Individuals [in Australia] who get into trouble with their drug use wouldn’t be subject to criminal penalties. Instead, they would front a health panel which gets them into treatment and helps them with other things like housing and employment.”
Portugal decriminalised drugs back in 2001. On recommendation from an independent panel, they took the funds they’d spend on prosecuting individuals and funnelled them into treatment, rehab, and social services. By and large, it’s been a success – although they still spend $$$ on prosecuting drug crime (decriminalisation 
legalisation).
“They saw … problematic drug use went down remarkably, drug use amongst young people decreased, many more people in treatment, they saw fewer cases of HIV being transmitted, fewer overdose deaths, and reduced crime,” Di Natale told ABC Radio, while acknowledging that illicit use of drugs remains relatively unchanged.
“It was a hugely successful initiative and I think there a big lessons to be learnt for countries like Australia.”
“[The government] felt that having a criminal penalty for individuals didn’t deter them for using that drug, but did deter them from seeking treatment.”
In 2001, 1% of Portugal’s population was addicted to heroin, according to author Johann Harri, who wrote ‘Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs‘.
“The prime minister and the leader of the opposition got together and did something really bold,” she told HuffPost in March this year. “They said, ‘Look, we’ve been trying the American way. Every year, we crack down, we put more people in prison, and every year the problem gets worse. Let’s do this differently.”
Di Natale is the co-convenor of the Australian Parliamentary Group on Drug Law Reform, a cross party group of 100 MPs from the State and Commonwealth parliaments that exists to encourage a more rational, tolerant, and humanitarian approach to drug problems and drug use.
Another co-convenor, Liberal Member Sharman Stone, reiterated to Fairfax what plenty have said for years: that our drug policy is not working.
“We need to look very carefully at what other countries are doing, where they have focused on taking what we’d call illicit substances, where they look at them as a health problem.”
Lead picture via Getty Images
