Political Memes

I'd say they're not really:

In 2001, Portugal decriminalised the personal possession of all drugs as part of a wider re-orientation of policy towards a health-led approach. Possessing drugs for personal use is instead treated as an administrative offence, meaning it is no longer punishable by imprisonment and does not result in a criminal record and associated stigma. Drugs are, however, still confiscated and possession may result in administrative penalties such as fines or community service.

-- https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight

Their reform came in the face of the extraordinary failure of the previous approach, to the degree that it had an actual impact on the ability of their society to function. They still punish drug users, they just do it differently.

They still see all drug use and getting out of your head as something bad, to be controlled and preferably eradicted, instead of seeing drug use as something which is any responsible adult's basic human right.

The list of freedoms we enjoy today that were not enjoyed by our ancestors is indeed a long and impressive one. It is therefore exceedingly strange that Western civilization in the twenty-first century enjoys no real freedom of consciousness.

There can be no more intimate and elemental part of the individual than his or her own consciousness. At the deepest level, our consciousness is what we are—to the extent that if we are not sovereign over our own consciousness then we cannot in any meaningful sense be sovereign over anything else either. So it has to be highly significant that, far from encouraging freedom of consciousness, our societies in fact violently deny our right to sovereignty in this intensely personal area, and have effectively outlawed all states of consciousness other than those on a very narrowly defined and officially approved list.

-- https://grahamhancock.com/the-war-on-consciousness-hancock/