Western Europe's Changing Attitudes Toward Drugs May 6, 2002
News Summary
Many Western European countries are shifting their approach to drugs by viewing users not as criminals, but as victims of a drug culture, the Washington Post reported May 3.Portugal, for instance, has decriminalized all drug use. Rather than send drug offenders to jail, the country is fighting the long-running war on drugs through treatment. "It's a good deal, because what I really want is to give up drugs," said Miguel, a 29-year-old addict from Lisbon. "And I could never do that in prison; in there, the dealers are living right next to you."
Spain, Italy, and Luxembourg also have decriminalized possession and use of most drugs. Other countries are waiving criminal penalties for individuals with addictions who are not drug dealers.
"The general trend across Europe is an approach that focuses on the traffickers and does not pursue the drug user as a criminal," said Georges Estievenart, director of the European Union's Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. "Some people refer to this as the 'pragmatic' approach. It assumes that drug use is a fact of life that society can't stop, so policymakers should try to control the damage. The U.S. perspective, of course, is different. They seek to eliminate drug use by prohibition."
While drug policy is not uniform throughout Europe, Jonathan Cave, a drug-policy expert at Warwick University in Great Britain, said the general direction is harm reduction rather than use reduction.
"As the U.S. experience shows, people do obtain and use drugs, even if you spend billions trying to stop them," Cave said. "So now the goal in Europe is to have it happen without the risk of overdose, of HIV, of random crime to support the habit."
Europe's approach is drawing criticism from U.S. drug-enforcement officials, as well as from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), a United Nations agency.
"It may not be possible to eliminate all forms of drug experimentation, use and abuse. But the difficulty of the challenge should not be used as an excuse not to take action," said Hamid Ghodse, president of the INCB.
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