July 5, 2011 9:07AM # 10 Years of Drug Decriminalization in Portugal By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) --- SHARE Ten years ago this month, Portugal rejected the conventional approach to drug policy–more laws, stiffer prison sentences, more police–and went the other way by [decriminalizing all drugs](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9C6x99EnFVdFuXw_B8pvDRzLqcA?docId=CNG.e740b6d0077ba8c28f6d1dd931c6f679.5e1), even cocaine and heroin. The drug warriors predicted a disaster. They said drug use would spike and there would be a public health crisis. That did not happen. As Glenn Greenwald showed in a 2009 [Cato report](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080), Portugal is doing better than before and in many respects is doing better than other countries in the European Union that take the hard-line, criminal approach to drug use. The buzzword in Washington these days is “evidence-based research.” Well, there you have it. More [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12476) and [here](https://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887). Thanks to the [Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/03/portugal-drug-laws-decriminalization-_n_889531.html#comments) for the pointer. ##### Related Tags [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).