ABSTRACT
Portugal attracted international attention when it removed criminal sanctions from the use and possession of all illegal drugs and, at the same time, extended the hand of professional services, solidarity, and citizenship to people who use illegal drugs. The evidence-based narrative, through which drugs decriminalization in Portugal is articulated, arguably fails to attend to social, historical, and cultural contexts and overlooks the less familiar types of power enacted by the decriminalization strategy. This chapter examines what is characteristically ‘Portuguese’ about the strategy and the subtle ways power is now exercised over people who use or are at risk of using drugs in Portugal.
