William Ward
HIS 3600
Professionalizing History Majors
Spring 2025
Mirjam van het Loo, Ineke van Beusekom, and James P. Kahan. “Decriminalization of Drug Use in Portugal: The Development of a Policy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 582 (2002): 49–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1049733.
When it comes to looking at academic JSTOR papers I haven’t done that often since beginning my degree. I often find myself finding first or secondary sources from time periods or citation directly from books. The last time I used it was a year ago for my World History of the Global Drug Trade class. The article I picked is about the rise of drug problem facing Portugal which led to the development of the Decriminalization of drugs in their country.
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The article builds up information to lay an understanding of the subject. Increasing drug death rates in Portugal along with a steady increase in drug related criminal arrests in their country. Using direct evidence and statistics when available they can map deaths from drugs directly onto graph charts showing an increase every year. Beginning with less than fifty drug related deaths in the country in 1987, increasing to almost four-hundred deaths by the year 1999 which was a breaking point for the Portuguese government becoming a call to action.(1) Following this it outlines and shows Portugal originally took a path that, “does not wish its policies to place it outside the mainstream of international drug policy”(2) As the drug deaths began to increase in the 1990s Portugal did not have any extreme drug policy and followed the norm with the international community. This however would not stay as more and more deaths lead to a better drug problem and plan with the decriminalization of the drugs along with an outlying drug plan. This plan is as follows the principle of international cooperation, the principle of prevention, the humanistic principle, the principle of pragmatism, the principle of security, the principle of coordination and rationalization of resources, the principle of subsidiarity, and the principle of participation with a budget of one hundred million Euros for the first year of it.(3) This plan and outline the authors see as a positive and correct course of action. They see that drastic change and taking the problem head on as a correct path. Using historical data and statistics collected by the government of Portugal the author paints a picture that decriminalization was a necessary drastic step the nation needed to make to address the blossoming drug addiction and drug deaths that were increases.
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One of the major concerns with this article is it didn’t have an amazing job of voicing a counter or critical opinion too well of decriminalization simply asserting that the outcome of decriminalization had yet to be determined and that you couldn’t really be critical of it since there hasn’t been evidence or a precedent of doing so in any nation. I found following data following this article release some worries people had of Decriminalization such as normalizing drug usage would cause more people to try drugs became a reality. As for the authors, Mirjam Van het Loo has a master’s degree in public administration and still works on research and academic papers. Along with that Ineke van Beusekom also has a master’s degree in public administration and works with RAND Europe on articles in health fields. As for James P. Kahan they are a research director at RAND Europe with a Ph. D. in mathematical social psychology and has focused study on Portuguese drug policy.(4) The authors are clearly well educated and have the right understanding of the field for the work and articles they make. Although as for purpose and view it’s clear that the authors may have a bias for the drastic change Portugal took for challenging their drug problem and its clear their viewpoint is a positive opinion of the actions of the Portuguese government and their article backs it up.
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As for me I found this article very useful and seeing and creating an entire research paper on the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal in Global History of the drug trade course. This article is useful for people to find out the causes and concerns that lead to decriminalization and for anyone interested in the history of drug policy and possible solutions to drug problems. Sources like this along with combining with more information is important for nations to tackle their growing drug problems especially when we in the United States have some very fatal drug problems growing.
1. Mirjam van het Loo, Ineke van Beusekom, and James P. Kahan. “Decriminalization of Drug Use in Portugal: The Development of a Policy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 582 (2002): 49–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1049733. Pg. 53
2. Ibid Pg. 54
3. Ibid Pg. 55
4. Ibid Pg. 49