Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs

Distributing, promoting and lending continuing support to good ideas for fixing the world’s woes is as critical a task as thinking them up in the first place.

Uganda has the best quality of death among low-income countries, according to the Economic Intelligence Unit. Its success stems in part from the strictly regulated but available supply of morphine, which is distributed by pharmacists in labeled bottles.

In many poor countries, counterfeit medicines are an enormous problem. A quarter-million malaria deaths each year might be prevented if the patients were treated with real drugs instead of fake ones.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related mortality. Naxolone, a drug used to revive overdose victims, is only available by prescription. However, private organizations have distributed Naxolone kits nationally, showing that the drug can save lives when it is more readily accessible.

In one year, the drug overdoses in Roanoke, VA have taken 12 lives and another 76 have overdosed but survived. The police department developed a new program called the Roanoke Valley Hope Initiative, designed to provide rehabilitation without arrest for those who seek it. The program simulates the successful national effort to help drug abusers instead of incarcerating them.

The heroin and opioid epidemic in America has raised questions about how to effectively treat addiction. Many now say medication should be offered alongside counseling.

An epidemic of opioid use in Massachusetts resulted in more than 1,200 fatal overdoses last year. Authorities turned to Vivitrol injections, which make a drug-induced high impossible, to cut rates of both addiction and incarceration.

For decades, the only good option for alcoholics seeking recovery was an abstinence-based 12-step program called Alcoholics Anonymous. John David Sinclair, an American neuroscientist, has developed a new method, where an alcoholic takes naltrexone one hour before drinking. The naltrexone blocks the brain's opioid receptors and prevents an alcoholics strong synaptic reward response from occurring, which allows their craving for alcohol to eventually subside.

Naloxone could be the secret to curing New England's heroin consumption. Trying to expand access to the life-saving overdose antidote is the real obstacle.

In Vermont, a judge and a family services organization created RapidReferal – a process which offers addicts treatment immediately and has lowered recidivism. Funded by Medicaid, the program has had demonstrable impact, namely, a decrease in recidivism.