Comment construire une décriminalisation durable ?

Bien que souvent présentée comme une solution miracle, la décriminalisation n’est qu’une pièce du puzzle et sa réussite dépend d’une amélioration globale du soutien social. Pour en savoir plus, en anglais, veuillez lire les informations ci-dessous.

In public drug policy conversations, decriminalization has too often been framed as a catch-all solution to drug-related issues, from overdose and stigma to health care access and public drug use. It’s easy to see why—especially in the heat of campaigns pushing for long-overdue reform—but overpromising can be dangerous.

While decriminalization is rightly celebrated as a progressive improvement to punitive drug laws, the global reality is messy: a patchwork of partial reforms, mixed results and models being measured against goals they were never designed to meet.

“We’ve developed this idea that decriminalization is some kind of magic bullet,” Professor Alison Ritter, AO, director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at the University of New South Wales, told Filter. “It will reduce arrests—we can be confident about that. There is evidence to support it. But will it reduce overdose rates? Honestly, I don’t think it would.”

At the International Conference on Health and Hepatitis in Substance Users (INHSU) in October 2024, Ritter presented data from various decriminalization models, evaluating their impact across four areas: arrests, overdose, stigma and health care access.

Her conclusion: Decriminalization consistently reduces arrests and incarceration for people who use drugs, but its impact on other harms is less clear. Ritter’s message? It’s time to get real about what decrim can and can’t do.

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“We now have drug decriminalization in 59 jurisdictions in 39 countries, and the momentum towards this approach is growing,” Jamie Bridge, deputy director of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), told Filter. “But the actual policies themselves vary a lot, with some much less effective and less fair than others.”