Importing the Portuguese Model of Drug Policy Reform

After overseeing a comprehensive review of drug policy in Portugal, where possession of everything from marijuana to heroin has been decriminalized since 2001, Alex Stevens, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Kent in Britain, has a blunt rebuttal to the classic "Think of the children" line of thinking. "Criminalization of drugs is not protecting our children," he says. "In fact, it's harming our children." By any conceivable empirical metric, Portugal’s vastly liberalized drug policy has succeeded. And as Stevens argues, the most potent lesson to be learned is that the "decriminalization of drugs does not necessarily lead to increases in drug use."