Lifetime drug users defined as.

Portugal decriminalization of drugs statistics. Overdose deaths have plummeted by 80 percent while the percentage of drug users diagnosed with new hiv infections fell from 52 percent in 2000 to 7 percent in 2015. With its recategorisation of low level drug possession as an administrative rather than criminal offence decriminalisation inevitably produced a reduction in the number of people arrested and sent to criminal court for drug offences from over 14000 in the year 2000 to around 5500 6000 per year once the policy had come into effect. A 2015 study found that since portugal approved the new national strategy in 1999 that led to decriminalization the per capita social cost of drug misuse decreased by 18.

Since portugal ceased criminalizing drug use the results have been dramatic1 the number of people voluntarily entering treatment has increased significantly while overdose deaths hiv infections problematic drug use and incarceration for drug related offenses have plummeted. Drug decriminalization is defined as the. Then now portugals drug decriminalization during the 1990s portugal was devastated by a drug crisis where one in every 100 people became addicted to heroin and the rate of hiv infection soared.