Portugal's decision to decriminalize drugs and treat users as addicts is having positive results

A decade after Portugal instituted reforms aimed at treating drug users rather than punishing them, health experts say the number of "problematic" drug users is way down.

The number of people who repeatedly use hard drugs and the number intravenous users has fallen in half since the early 1990s, Joao Goulao, president of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction says, according to AFP.

Portugal didn't make drug use legal, but rather took a holistic approach by implementing drug treatment and risk reduction policies.

The law passed July 1, 2001, forced users caught with illegal drugs to appear before special addition panels composed of psychologists, judges and social workers.

A report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction says drug use statistics in Portugal are lower than the European average and much lower than in neighboring Spain, AFP reports.

(Published by ABA Journal - July 5, 2011)