legitimatize drugs is a hot issue these days , with the blue touch - paper having been lit last calendar month by Richard Branson ’s leaking of aUN reportthat criticized the current criminalization insurance policy adopted by most government . Though the written document was finally block before it could be formally free , its sentiments are being adopted by a turn of nation , withIrelandthe belated to propose the legalization of supervised diacetylmorphine usance .
If vote in by parliament , it is hoped that the measures could lead to a diminution in overdose demise and cut the banquet of infections through the share-out of pollute needle . At the same time , however , opponents of the idea fear that it could conduct to an increase in drug use . Yet Ireland would not be the first country to implement such a insurance policy , which means it ’s now possible to deliberate the payoff using grounds obtained from previous examples .
The most striking case is that ofPortugal , where in 1999 around 1 % of the population was addicted to heroin , while the spread of computer virus such as HIV and hepatitis B and C was on the increase . In what was seen as a drastic move by many at the meter , the Lusitanian government decided to decriminalize the monomania of all drugs in 2001 , allowing user to seek treatment instead of being pursue . On the whole , the resultshave been extremely positive . For instance , toxicology report indicate that the number of death attributed at once to drug decreased from around 80 in 2001 to 16 in 2012 . Over the same period , the number of drug users diagnosed with HIV per twelvemonth fell from 1,016 to 56 .
When it comes to overall drug use , the picture show is a little murkier , with some pointing to the fact that lifetime drug exercise – meaning the bit of people who have used drugs at any point in their living – has in fact increased from 8 % to 10 % during the same timeframe . However , the number of people using drugs per year has decreased , as has drug use among 15- to 24 - year - old – the radical most at risk of initiating soporific use .
While other land may not have gone quite as far as Portugal in their harm diminution policy , several have introducedsafe injection roomsfor heroin users . Among them is Spain , where the number of overdose deaths decreased from 1,833 in 1991 to 773 in 2008 , while the percentage of new HIV infections among client of these facilities fell from 19.9 pct in 2004 to 8.2 per centum in 2008 .
On top of all this , a theme by theEuropean Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addictionfound no evidence that decriminalizing drugs leads to increase use , or that the intro of strict penalization farm a decrease . In lighting of this and other data point , the leaked report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime argued that the criminalization of drug in fact acquire “ negative consequences for base hit , security and human right . ”
However , while much of the evidence suggests that decriminalisation can have convinced outcome , it is important to note that drug - relate problem are also influenced by a wide range of a function of other factors . For instance , a study byAlex Stevensof the University of Kent ’s School of Social Policy , Sociology and Social Research found that the charge per unit of drug injection among a certain population is greatly bear upon by the grade of societal social welfare provided by that area ’s government .
