Substance Dependence- A Case Study

Substance abuse has been a running issue across the globe and refers to the excessive use of psychoactive drugs, such as alcohol, pain medications or illegal drugs. It leads to physical, cognitive, or/and emotional harm to individuals as well as creating a large impact on the community. It affects schools, and workplaces across geographies, cultures, etc and the social impact results in concerns ranging from unsafe workplaces to widespread disease to crime.

In short, this menace affects the bio-psycho-social aspect of individuals and the communities they live in making it a growing concern. The numbers show that individuals under the influence of illegal drugs and/or psychoactive drugs have increased exponentially with the U.S. having 21 million individuals having at least one addiction and cases of drug overdose going up 3 times since 1990. 

Though many countries across the globe have taken measures to end this by putting in place stringent measures that include criminalising possession of non-prescribed drugs, very little improvement is to be seen.

Portugal tried a different approach from the rest of the world, which has worked wonders. Portugal experienced a drug exploitation crisis - especially heroin- and caused almost half of the prison population were inmates connected with drug consumption or drug peddling. However, the authorities realised these were not efficient in controlling the number of consumers. In 1998, they decided to adopt a different approach and decided to treat drug abusers as patients – and not as criminals- who needed medical help. Through this, cops were able to find the drug peddlers and the mental rehabilitation centres could treat the substance dependence among the users. This approach was implemented in 1999, which led to the decriminalising of drugs and resulted in the misuse of drugs decreasing by 18% as well as drug law violations decreasing from 44% in 1999 to 24% in 2013.

This shows the impact of an ‘out of the box’ strategy adopted by a country, which may not have the same effect elsewhere. The approach to dealing with the drug exploitation crisis should be custom-made since each is different in culture and socio-economic structures. The strategy should also factor in the percentage of drug abusers, the causes, family situation, geography, social- status etc. and to make this successful there is a need for joint efforts from medical professionals, judiciary, family members, and individuals. For collectively, we can change this World.