What happened when Portugal decriminalised all drugs?

The crisis that forced a change

By the late 1990s Portugal had an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people addicted to drugs, mostly heroin, in a country of 10 million. In 1999 it had the highest rate of HIV among people who inject drugs in the European Union, with about 2,000 new cases a year (Wikipedia, 2026a). In 2001 and 2002, Portugal held 2% of the EU's population and more than half of all its new HIV diagnoses linked to injecting (Transform, 2021).

Arrests weren't stopping it. In 2001 more than 40% of people serving prison sentences in Portugal were there for drug offences (Transform, 2021).

A doctor at the centre

One of the reform's architects is João Goulão, a family doctor. He qualified in Lisbon in 1978, became a general practitioner in 1983, and from 1987 worked with people addicted to drugs, including four years at the Taipas Centre, a Lisbon treatment service set up by the Ministry of Health (Wikipedia, 2026b).

In 1998 the government asked 11 experts, Goulão among them, to design a national strategy. He summed up where they started: "One of our premises is that drug abusers are ill, not criminals, and that they need help" (Wikipedia, 2026b). Parliament passed Law 30/2000, and it took effect in July 2001 (Wikipedia, 2026a).

That premise came easily to a country that already treated health as a right. Portugal's 1976 constitution, written after the 1974 Carnation Revolution ended nearly five decades of dictatorship (Wikipedia, 2026f), guarantees health protection, and in 1979 the country built a national health service "free, universal and accessible to all residents" (Wikipedia, 2026c). A people who had rebuilt their state around the idea that illness is everyone's business found it natural to put addiction in the same place.

The reform also carried people with it. A 2023 study in Addiction puts the success down to the way it was made: an electoral mandate, open deliberation, inclusion of the people who would run it, and evaluation from the start (Moury & Escada, 2023).

How it works

Decriminalised doesn't mean legal. Selling, growing and trafficking remain crimes. What changed is what happens to the person who uses.

• The limit. Anyone found with no more than ten days' supply of a drug commits an administrative offence, like a parking fine, not a crime (Wikipedia, 2026a).
• The panel. Police refer the person to a "dissuasion commission": three people, typically a social worker, a psychiatrist and a lawyer, with one in each of Portugal's 18 districts (Wikipedia, 2026a).
• The outcome. The panel can fine between €25 and €150, but usually doesn't. In 2019, 80% of its decisions suspended the case, 19% imposed a penalty and 1% acquitted (Rêgo et al., 2021). A person who needs treatment is offered it.

Police stayed part of the system. In interviews with 19 Portuguese police executives, policymakers and officers, the police describe themselves as a route into treatment for people who are otherwise hard to reach, while still able to deal with disruptive public drug use and chase traffickers. Over time, police culture came round to it (Moniz et al., 2026).

The results

Measure	Around 2001	Around 2019
New HIV diagnoses linked to injecting	1,287	16
Drug-induced deaths	76 (2001)	6 per million adults, against an EU average of 23.7
Sentenced prisoners held for drug offences	over 40%	15.7%

(Transform, 2021, drawing on Portuguese and European monitoring data)

The feared surge in drug use never came. Criminologists Caitlin Hughes and Alex Stevens compared Portugal with Spain and Italy and found no major rise in use, and falls in problem use, drug-related harm and prison overcrowding (Hughes & Stevens, 2010). Use has stayed below the European average (Transform, 2021).

One caution: Portugal expanded treatment at the same time. People in substitution treatment rose from 6,040 to 25,808 (Wikipedia, 2026a), so decriminalisation didn't act alone. Hughes and Stevens also found both sides of the debate stretching the figures, some calling it a resounding success, others a disaster (Hughes & Stevens, 2012). The fair reading is that removing the criminal penalty, backed by treatment, did not make things worse and helped make them much better.

Where it's strained

The model has not stood still, and not all the change is good.

• The institution was folded. The Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, which ran the response as one body, was abolished in 2011. A smaller agency, SICAD, took over policy and treatment passed to regional health administrations (Rêgo et al., 2021).
• Courts pushed back. A 2008 Supreme Court judgment made possession above the ten-day limit a crime again, and the decade after it saw more people who use drugs sentenced to jail (Rêgo et al., 2021).
• Harm reduction lagged. Lisbon opened the country's first drug consumption room only in May 2021 (Rêgo et al., 2021). During COVID, Porto took a restrictive line while Lisbon leaned on harm reduction, and people in Lisbon found services easier to reach (Vale Pires et al., 2025).
• Money fell away. Reduced funding was followed by more visible drug use in Portuguese cities by 2023 (Wikipedia, 2026d).

None of this shows the idea failed. It shows what happens when the health half of a health policy is starved. Oregon ran a version of the test: it decriminalised possession of all drugs in February 2021, then made possession of hard drugs a crime again from September 2024 after a public backlash (Wikipedia, 2026e). Decriminalisation on its own is a law change. Portugal's results came from the law change plus the doctors, panels and treatment places behind it.

What Australia has done

Australia spends most of its drug money on policing. The breakdown is in Where does Australia's drug policy money go?

One place has started down Portugal's road. In October 2023 the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise possession of small amounts of several illicit drugs. Police can send a person to a health education session or issue a $100 fine; supply remains a crime. A year later most people who use drugs in Canberra knew about the change, but many thought it meant drugs were now legal, or that police would do nothing (Sutherland et al., 2026). The law moved; the explaining hasn't caught up.

What you can check

• Look up what happens in your state or territory if someone is caught with a small amount. In most of Australia it's still a criminal offence, with a diversion scheme that may or may not apply.
• When someone says "Portugal legalised drugs", check it: Portugal decriminalised use, and selling is still a crime.
• When someone says Portugal's model failed, ask which part: the law, or the funding for the treatment behind it.