That's not the same than being decriminalized.

In Portugal, if you do that the police will ask you for your ID if it's a light drug like cannabis, or take you to the police center if it's an heavier drug. If you keep being caught by the police a judge can order you to take psychiatric help.

Being decriminalized means that you won't be arrested when you ask for help, and you have access to clean syringes to avoid diseases and infections.

Help being provided, it's not the same than being legal.

It seems from this that Portugal is less decriminalized than SF? Which also has clean syringes but the cops will let you shoot up or smoke in peace.

While what you're saying is true, I think that's why the world is afraid to adopt Portugal's policy. If getting halfway there is worse than doing nothing at all, it's a very dangerous thing to try.

Just my opinion:

In my experience, when people say drugs they think of cannabis, but cannabis was never the major problem in Portugal.

Our problem was heroin. I think no country will legalize heroin, at least not in the short/medium term.

This is clearly working, one of the major entrypoints of heavy drugs in Europe (Casal Ventoso in Lisbon) is almost clean of problems, there are still heavy drug users of course, but most of the associated violence disappeared.

Even portuguese people's mindset shifted from "junkies" to "people that need help".

So even if you consider a "halfway there" because you're thinking about legalization, this is still working and it's a good middle term to help society shift their mentality.

Disclaimer: I'm talking from my experience as a Portuguese person, not hard numbers. I remember walking in my hometown parks (which is a very small city) and see syringes and drug users everywhere when I was a kid. This doesn't happen anymore.

Heroin does seem to be a problematic drug.

I read that only 10% of users get addicted. But are there places where heroin is used where it doesn't become a problem?

(I am from the country where the film Trainspotting is set).

> In 1971, as the Vietnam War was heading into its sixteenth year, congressmen Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois made a discovery that stunned the American public. While visiting the troops, they had learned that over 15 percent of U.S. soldiers stationed there were heroin addicts. Follow up research revealed that 35 percent of service members in Vietnam had tried heroin and as many as 20 percent were addicted—the problem was even worse than they had initially thought. [...]

> Lee Robins was one of the researchers in charge. In a finding that completely upended the accepted beliefs about addiction, Robins found that when soldiers who had been heroin users returned home, only 5 percent of them became re-addicted within a year, and just 12 percent relapsed within three years. In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight.

From https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits

True, I had heard that before, but its not really what I was asking. Your example still has 10% addicts (the same number that I mentioned). Did these people become problematic to their wider community? The 10% who become addicted have caused plenty of problems in my city.