How Portugal eased its opioid epidemic, while U.S. drug deaths skyrocketed

Dr. João Goulão, director-general of the General Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies General Directorate, is widely credited with shifting Portugal's addiction response toward a focus on health care and treatment. Overdose deaths have plummeted.Dr.

"The statistics really speak for themselves," said Miguel Moniz, an anthropologist at the University of Lisbon, who studies addiction policy in the U.S. and Portugal.What's different in Portugal? In the late 1990s, the country faced an explosion of heroin use. The drug was causing roughly 350 overdose deaths a year and sparked a wave of HIV/AIDS and other diseases linked to dirty needles.

Many U.S. drug policy experts who've studied the Portugal model say it's clear parts of it worked far better than the tough-on-crime philosophy embraced by U.S. "In the beginning, most policemen were very, very skeptical about this policy," said Artur Vaz, who leads Portugal's national police unit focused on drug trafficking.

"Most police have come to believe this is a balanced approach," Vaz said."People who consume drugs should be treated by the health system, not the criminal system." Dr. João Goulão, Portugal's national drug czar, said street cops have emerged as a vital link between the most vulnerable drug users, like Duchandre, and opportunities for treatment.

"If we stopped arrests and did nothing else, that's a positive intervention because of the well-documented harms of incarceration ," said Morgan Godvin, a former heroin user who now studies drug policy in Portland, Ore. Critics say drugs were fully or partially decriminalized before other social programs, like the ones in Portugal, were in place and widely available to pick up the slack.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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