
What Happened After Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs, from Weed to Heroin - prawn
https://news.vice.com/article/ungass-portugal-what-happened-after-decriminalization-drugs-weed-to-heroin
======
jazoom
I find this a little confusing. The article says drugs are still illegal
there, and people are still "caught" with them, but people are allowed to have
them.

Can someone from Portugal comment on how clear the distinctions are over
there? Is it actually confusing, with police still "catching" you using drugs,
or is that just the article's terminology?

From reading this article it sounds like there's one foot in each camp, which
could be pretty frustrating.

~~~
uzantonomon
Portuguese here. From what I know people can have certain doses with them, as
long as it is for own consumption. I don't know the correct values thou.

~~~
fit2rule
Says so right in the article: quantities greater than 10 days worth of private
use...

~~~
brbsix
Barring evidence of distribution or an admission otherwise, I wonder how they
could ever prosecute someone for greater quantities. Suppose you're found with
100 tabs of Oxycodone. For a casual user, that might be a 3 month supply. For
someone else, it may barely cover 10 days. This remains true for other drugs.
I knew someone who used to take LSD every morning just so they could take a
shit. I don't know what a 10-day supply looked like for them and that's pretty
much my point, how will law enforcement know either?

~~~
detaro
They set actual limits, the 10 days was just a guideline they used to arrive
at those numbers. Source:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-
drug-d...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-
decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html)

------
tlb
Here's a graph of the unemployment rate in Portugal.
[http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/charts/portugal-
unemployment...](http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/charts/portugal-unemployment-
rate@2x.png?s=ptue&v=201609011331o&d1=19160101&d2=20161231)

If you made a major public policy change in 2001 and then saw that graph, you
might wonder if there was a link.

~~~
JusticeJuice
Except for the fact that unemployment rose in Europe in general in that time
period. Greece and Spain both had peak unemployment at the exact same time as
Portugal - despite both Greece and Spain not using Portugals drug policy.

[https://www.google.co.nz/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa...](https://www.google.co.nz/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:pt:el:it&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:sa&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country_group&idim=country:pt:el:es&ifdim=country_group&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)

