Decriminalization

Should drugs be decriminalised in the name of Public Health?

We usually understand “decriminalization” like the elimination of criminal penalties on someone who posses a drug for personal use,maybe accompanied by a fine.
For understanding better what decriminalization means, I want to put an example. Portuguese government decriminalized the use and possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroinand other illicit street drugs. The aim of this decriminalization is to fight against deaths and infections. Therefore the possession of small amounts of drugs is not a crime. The interesting pointabout this is that someone who is found in possession of a legal amount of a drug has a chance of receive assessment and recommendations from specialized people about how to solve his problem. Therecommendations are a warning with information about the dangers of drug abuse for an occasional user, and also the objective can be getting treatment. This system gives us other side aboutdecriminalization. As Portugal, many governments like Spain and Italy do not criminalize the possession of a limited quantity of certain drugs for personal use, while still prohibiting their sale or manufacture, orpossession in large quantities. We can learn about a constructive way of fight against drugs abuse.

Public health must solve population health problems. From my point of view every government hasan obligation to ensure a high level of human health protection. There are a lot of countries where drugs is a society problem. In US adolescent substance abuse is a major national public healthproblem. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction have results that tell us that drugs is also a big problem.

There are a lot of prevention policies. I want to make a reflection aboutwhat is the best way of manage this. There are a lot of countries where there is a prohibition policy. Most of people think prohibition of drugs is the best way to prevent drug use. I am not sure about...