Talk to people addicted to street drugs in Lisbon, Portugal’s capital, and you hear confusion and dismay over the carnage of overdose deaths taking place an ocean away in the U.S.
Ana Batista, a soft-spoken woman in her 50s who’s been addicted to heroin for years, said she hasn’t lost a single friend or family member to a fatal overdose.
“No, no, no,” she said, speaking at a safe drug consumption clinic, where she had come to inject under the supervision of nurses and counselors.
Liliana Santos, 41, a woman with a sad weathered face who had come to the clinic to smoke heroin, voiced similar bafflement.
Had she lost friends or family? “No.” Had she overdosed herself? She shook her head: “No, no.”
The contrast is striking. In the U.S., drug deaths are shatteringly common, killing roughly 112,000 people a year. In Portugal, weeks sometimes go by in the entire country without a single fatal overdose.
Instead, Portugal focused scarce public dollars on health care, drug treatment, job training and housing. The system, integrated into the country’s taxpayer-funded national health care system, is free and relatively easy to navigate. “Someone who has problematic drug use isn’t someone who is a criminal or someone who has a moral failing,” Moniz said, describing Portugal’s official view of addiction.
Is it because they treat the actual problem, and not regard drug users as expendable criminals? Yeah, that’s it.
This is old news in Portugal. Our problem is having the money to keep specialised support units open with nurses, therapists and social workers. But the goal for decades has always been to help people find a new life. And alcohol has been the hardest drug to overcome, btw.
Funnily enough, there’s always money for cops and jails but getting money for things that really work is a constant struggle.
