We Should Study Portugal’s Approach to Illegal Drugs

Letter to WSJ.

"In support of Dr. Jeffrey Singer’s March 4 letter which describes the fruitless “Whac-A-Mole” war on drugs, certainly a failure in its attempt to decrease the use and devastating rise in overdose deaths, I call attention to the Portuguese experience. Drug possession was decriminalized in that country in 2001, making drug possession a minor infringement resulting in a fine and referral for treatment for the most part. Portuguese drug use, HIV infection and drug-related deaths have diminished, with hardly anyone dying from drug overdoses, to paraphrase a recent widely read U.S. newspaper headline.

Outlawing a substance for which many addicted Americans will literally die to get their next dose should seem logically counterproductive. Incarceration, as experienced in our country, seems to have almost as devastating an effect on many addicts as the drugs themselves.

Detailed descriptions of the disastrous drug war’s failures and the necessity to end it can be found in several recent annual reports by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, whose honorary chairman is former Secretary of State George Shultz.

Nelson Goodman, M.D., FACP
Annapolis, Md."