It's a very important goal, but if you believe that drug use itself is corrosive to the culture and prosperity of a people, you might prioritize overall drug use.
Let's take a hypothetical. Do you prefer a society where 30% have drug problems damaging themselves and their families, but there are very few overdose deaths and diseases among that 30%? Or one in which only 5% have drug problems, but there many more deaths and diseases among that 5%? I don't think there's an obviously right choice.
Ideally we can thread the needle and lower drug usage in addition to reducing the harms associated with it. That's the trillion dollar policy question and I don't think anyone has solved it yet.
That’s a highly confounding factor too then. For whatever reason, Portugal didn’t have much of a drug culture to begin with. That makes it harder to translate any lessons to other countries that do.
Let's take a hypothetical. Do you prefer a society where 30% have drug problems damaging themselves and their families, but there are very few overdose deaths and diseases among that 30%? Or one in which only 5% have drug problems, but there many more deaths and diseases among that 5%? I don't think there's an obviously right choice.
Ideally we can thread the needle and lower drug usage in addition to reducing the harms associated with it. That's the trillion dollar policy question and I don't think anyone has solved it yet.