Drugs, they are everywhere. From inside your grandma’s kitchen cabinet to inside your roommate’s bong, they are everywhere. Whether they are pharmaceutical drugs or recreational drugs is a whole different story. Dig deeper and you will see that there are drug wars all over the world, it could even be called an epidemic. With that being said, it should be treated as an epidemic, and in the 20th century Portugal was in the very midst of its’ own drug epidemic. Nearly 1% of Portugal’s population was addicted to heroine (Hari 11). This is because of Portugal's initial approach to the war on drugs. Instead of learning about why people were doing these drugs they were telling them “no bad, stop that” and just arresting said citizens. This lead to citizens who could no longer get a job or even return to their previous jobs because of their criminal record. Later on Portugal decided to take a much more different approach: to decriminalize drugs and to try helping those who were addicted. This different approach ended up working fairly well and decreased injecting drug use by 50% according to an article written by Johann Hari. Hari is right in his argument that the war on drugs should be fought differently, but Hari’s Portugal implementation is not workable in larger more developed countries.

Portugal’s population in 2000 was 10,250,000 people. One percent of that population is 102,500 that were all addicted to heroine (Hari 11). What if we changed the number of the population, and perhaps multiplied it by 27.53? We would end up with the population of the United States in 2000: 282,000,000. This is how much larger the US population is compared to Portugal. Portugal's one percent is: 102,500 whereas the US has a one percent of: 2,822,000. Implementing a plan similar to the one used in Portugal would be unrealistic in the United States because of the significant difference in population. This is in fact because of how Portugal taxes their people; Portugal's income tax ranges from 20 percent to 40 (“Portugal Personal Income Tax Rate”) percent depending on how much you make, and Portugal's sales tax in 2000 was about 17 percent (“Portugal Sales Tax Rate - VAT”). The reason why this is important to mention is because the Portugal government taxes their people significantly higher than the US does. Thus Portugal has more money to go towards more things. This can be seen in Portugal’s roadways as they had the 2nd best infrastructure for roads in the world (2014-2015) according to the Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015. One may argue that a country as large as the US has the money for such a project. In all reality that is not the case because the US likes to have a very large military presence all around the world.

Hari also did not include how Portugal decriminalized drugs in his article. In an outside source (Braham) the author Daphne Braham discusses how the countries drug enforcement is carried out. “If police find you with illicit drugs, you’ll be arrested ” (Braham). Braham goes onto discuss the amount of drugs on you; if it is more than a 10 day supply of any type of drug you will be charged for 1-14 years. If you are found to be carrying less than that then you will be sent to the Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction. There Braham says: “you will be interviewed by a psychologist or social worker before appearing before a three-person panel that will offer suggestions aimed at stopping your drug use”. After all that is said and done you can either accept help or decline help. If you decide to decline help you can be asked to either partake in community service or even pay a fine. As a tourist if you do not have said money to pay the fine you may have possessions confiscated and sold on your behalf to pay the fine. Such methods are how Portugal is able to sustain their drug program. If the US were able to set up a solution similar to Portugal’s I could foresee the US using methods similar to this one.

One percent is not always the same number and it can never be treated equally. One person’s one percent is not always going to be another person’s one percent. That is why it is not as easy as “just copy Portugal” as it is much more complicated than that. It took Portugal approximately 2 years to come up with that program. Imagine how long it would take the US to come up with all the necessary resources to make this a reality, not to mention how long it would take to get everyone else to do it. There would be complications within our legislative process, states have the autonomy to decide which laws to enforce and because of this the plan set up may not be as effective. "...he (Joao Figueira) now hopes the whole world will follow Portugal's example" (Hari 12). Even the main guy who was campaigning against the decriminalization has made up his mind. It's a very good idea, and it's execution worked very well in Portugal. It just wouldn't work as well in larger more developed countries.

Works Cited

Bramham, Daphne. “Daphne Bramham: Decriminalization Is No Silver Bullet, Says Portugal's Drug Czar.” Vancouver Sun, 14 Sept. 2018, https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/daphne-bramham-decriminalization-is-no-silver-bullet-says-portugals-drug-czar.
“Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015.” World Economic Forum, 21 Aug. 2014, www.weforum.org/reports/global-competitiveness-report-2014-2015.
Hari, Johann. “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered and It Is Not What You Think.” Huffington Post. HPMG News, 20 January 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html.
“Portugal Personal Income Tax Rate.” Portugal Personal Income Tax Rate | 2019 | Data | Chart | Calendar, http://tradingeconomics.com/portugal/personal-income-tax-rate.
“Portugal Sales Tax Rate - VAT.” Portugal Sales Tax Rate - VAT | 2019 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast, http://tradingeconomics.com/portugal/sales-tax-rate.