“Children aged 15–16 [in Portugal] also reported one of the lowest lifetime prevalence of cannabis use in Western Europe (13 percent),” the EMCDDA found, while their level of cocaine use is almost half the EU average. It is slightly down since decriminalization started: in 1999, 2.5 percent of sixteen-to-eighteen-year-olds used heroin. By 2005, after six years of this model of decriminalization, it was down to 1.8 percent.
