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Connolly, Johnny Reports examine effects of decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal. Drugnet Ireland, Issue 30, Summer , pp. Portugal became the first country in the European Union to decriminalise all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, under a statue passed in Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offence. The law, according to a report commissioned by the Beckley Foundation,2 'formed part of a strategic approach to drug use which aimed to focus police resources on those people who profit from the drugs trade, while enabling a public health approach to drug users' p. A recent analysis of the legal reforms by the US-based Cato Institute3 has concluded that 'judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success' p. Repository Staff Only: item control page. Skip to main content Link to Health Research Board twitter page, opens in new window Link to Health Research Board r s s feed, opens in new window drugslibrary hrb. Preview Title Contact Preview. Although several EU states have developed either formal or de facto forms of de-penalisation, particularly for personal cannabis use, whereby offenders seldom receive custodial sanctions, no EU state except Portugal has explicitly decriminalised drugs. Under the statute, decriminalisation applies to the consumption, purchase and possession of all drugs for 'one's own consumption', which is defined as a quantity 'not exceeding the quantity required for an average individual consumption during a period of ten days' Article 2. No distinction is made between drug types or between public and private consumption. The statute establishes Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction CDTs to adjudicate and impose appropriate sanctions for violations of the new law. The CDTs comprise three members appointed jointly by the ministries of justice and health and the government's co-ordinator of drug policy, whereby one will have legal training and at least one of the other two will have a medical or social services background. In the absence of evidence of addiction or repeated violations, the imposition of a fine is to be suspended. The CDT can also suspend sanctions on condition that the offender attends treatment. The Cato report points out that it is difficult to enforce such conditions in practice 'since violations of a commission's rulings are not, themselves, infractions of any law' p. Where offenders are deemed to be addicted to drugs, the CDT can impose a range of other sanctions, including, as summarised in the Cato report, 'suspension of the right to practise a licensed profession doctor, lawyer, taxi driver ; a ban on visiting high-risk locales nightclubs ; a ban on associating with specified individuals; In determining the appropriate sanction, the CDT must consider factors such as 'the seriousness of the act; the type of drug consumed; whether consumption was public or private; and whether usage is occasional or habitual' p. However, providing drugs to a minor or to a person with mental illness is considered an aggravating factor under the general prohibition of trafficking, which is punishable by imprisonment of between four and 12 years. Police officers who observe drug use or possession are required to issue citations to the offender, but they are not permitted to make an arrest. The citation is sent to the CDT and the administrative process then commences. The Cato report notes that the reaction of police officers to the initiative has been mixed, with some believing that 'the issuance of citations, without arrest or the threat of criminal prosecutions, is worthless' p. The Beckley Foundation report described the nature of the support for the latter view:. The law enforcement sector was seen as supportive of the reform, particularly because they perceived decriminalization and referral to education and treatment as offering a better response to drug users than under the previous legislative approach. Key informants asserted law enforcement have embraced the more preventative role for drug users. Cannabis continues to be the substance for which the greatest percentage of drug offenders are cited. Despite fears expressed by those opposing the reform prior to , decriminalisation has not led to an increase in drug use. On the contrary, lifetime drug prevalence rates have decreased in Portugal since the reform. For the critical age groups of years and years, 'prevalence rates have declined for virtually every substance since decriminalization' p. Furthermore, the author links a fall in the numbers of new cases of drug-related HIV and AIDS, hepatitis B and C infection, and drug-related death to the coming into effect of the law in Although he acknowledges that these trends started prior to and were due in part to education reforms and harm reduction initiatives introduced in Portugal, he suggests that the removal of the fear and stigma of arrest and prosecution incentivised drug users to avail of these new treatment and education initiatives. The analysis by the Beckley Foundation sounds a more cautious note, which probably accurately reflects the current debate about decriminalisation in Portugal:. Decriminalization has enabled earlier intervention and more targeted and therapeutic responses to drug users, increased collaboration across a network of services and increased attention to adopting policies that work. Yet, key informants also highlighted that impacts were less than expected and that there were concerns over the message that decriminalization was sending to new drug users. Briefing paper Oxford: The Beckley Foundation. Available at www. Greenwald G Drug decriminalization in Portugal: lessons for creating fair and successful drug policies. Washington DC: Cato Institute. Item Type. Publication Type. International, Open Access, Article. Drug Type. Issue Title. Issue 30, Summer Page Range. Health Research Board. Accession Number. HRB Available.

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Challenges and Limitations

Portugal where can I buy cocaine

Since it decriminalised all drugs in , Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime. W hen the drugs came, they hit all at once. It was the 80s, and by the time one in 10 people had slipped into the depths of heroin use — bankers, university students, carpenters, socialites, miners — Portugal was in a state of panic. The crisis began in the south. Headlines in the local press raised the alarm about overdose deaths and rising crime. Pereira recalled desperate patients and families beating a path to his door, terrified, bewildered, begging for help. In truth, there was a lot of ignorance back then. The country was closed to the outside world; people missed out on the experimentation and mind-expanding culture of the s. When the regime ended abruptly in a military coup in , Portugal was suddenly opened to new markets and influences. Under the old regime, Coca-Cola was banned and owning a cigarette lighter required a licence. When marijuana and then heroin began flooding in, the country was utterly unprepared. Pereira tackled the growing wave of addiction the only way he knew how: one patient at a time. A student in her 20s who still lived with her parents might have her family involved in her recovery; a middle-aged man, estranged from his wife and living on the street, faced different risks and needed a different kind of support. Pereira improvised, calling on institutions and individuals in the community to lend a hand. Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission — a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker — about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them. The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time high in of The data behind these changes has been studied and cited as evidence by harm-reduction movements around the globe. In many ways, the law was merely a reflection of transformations that were already happening in clinics, in pharmacies and around kitchen tables across the country. The official policy of decriminalisation made it far easier for a broad range of services health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc that had been struggling to pool their resources and expertise, to work together more effectively to serve their communities. The language began to shift, too. This, too, was crucial. While drug-related death, incarceration and infection rates plummeted, the country still had to deal with the health complications of long-term problematic drug use. Diseases including hepatitis C, cirrhosis and liver cancer are a burden on a health system that is still struggling to recover from recession and cutbacks. They criticise the state for dragging its feet on establishing supervised injection sites and drug consumption facilities; for failing to make the anti-overdose medication naloxone more readily available; for not implementing needle-exchange programmes in prisons. Where, they ask, is the courageous spirit and bold leadership that pushed the country to decriminalise drugs in the first place? Drugs were denounced as evil, drug users were demonised, and proximity to either was criminally and spiritually punishable. Informal treatment approaches and experiments were rushed into use throughout the country, as doctors, psychiatrists, and pharmacists worked independently to deal with the flood of drug-dependency disorders at their doors, sometimes risking ostracism or arrest to do what they believed was best for their patients. Lopes was the first doctor in continental Europe to experiment with substitution therapy, flying in methadone powder from Boston, under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, rather than the Ministry of Health. His efforts met with a vicious public backlash and the disapproval of his peers, who considered methadone therapy nothing more than state-sponsored drug addiction. In Lisbon, Odette Ferreira, an experienced pharmacist and pioneering HIV researcher, started an unofficial needle-exchange programme to address the growing Aids crisis. She received death threats from drug dealers, and legal threats from politicians. She collected donations of clothing, soap, razors, condoms, fruit and sandwiches, and distributed them to users. A flurry of expensive private clinics and free, faith-based facilities emerged, promising detoxes and miracle cures, but the first public drug-treatment centre run by the Ministry of Health — the Centro das Taipas in Lisbon — did not begin operating until But Porto was at the other end of the country. To get around that, Pereira sometimes asked a nurse to sneak methadone to him in the boot of his car. Now 68, he is sprightly and charming, with an athletic build, thick and wavy white hair that bounces when he walks, a gravelly drawl and a bottomless reserve of warmth. By the time he finished school, got his licence and began practising medicine at a health centre in the southern city of Faro, it was everywhere. Like Pereira, he accidentally ended up specialising in treating drug addiction. These kinds of centres have used different names and acronyms over the years, but are still commonly referred to as Centros de Atendimento a Toxicodependentes , or CATs. Local residents were vehemently opposed, and the doctors were improvising treatments as they went along. It had become clear to a growing number of practitioners that the most effective response to addiction had to be personal, and rooted in communities. Treatment was still small-scale, local and largely ad hoc. He found the practice of jailing people for taking drugs to be counterproductive and unethical. He recommended that drug use be discouraged without imposing penalties, or further alienating users. The resulting recommendations, including the full decriminalisation of drug use, were presented in , approved by the council of ministers in , and a new national plan of action came into effect in He has been the lodestar throughout eight alternating conservative and progressive administrations; through heated standoffs with lawmakers and lobbyists; through shifts in scientific understanding of addiction and in cultural tolerance for drug use; through austerity cuts, and through a global policy climate that only very recently became slightly less hostile. Every family had their addict, or addicts. A drop-in centre called IN-Mouraria sits unobtrusively in a lively, rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood of Lisbon, a longtime enclave of marginalised communities. From 2pm to 4pm, the centre provides services to undocumented migrants and refugees; from 5pm to 8pm, they open their doors to drug users. A staff of psychologists, doctors and peer support workers themselves former drug users offer clean needles, pre-cut squares of foil, crack kits, sandwiches, coffee, clean clothing, toiletries, rapid HIV testing, and consultations — all free and anonymous. On the day I visited, young people stood around waiting for HIV test results while others played cards, complained about police harassment, tried on outfits, traded advice on living situations, watched movies and gave pep talks to one another. They varied in age, religion, ethnicity and gender identity, and came from all over the country and all over the world. When a slender, older man emerged from the bathroom, unrecognisable after having shaved his beard off, an energetic young man who had been flipping through magazines threw up his arms and cheered. And he would know. He had stopped doing speedballs mixtures of cocaine and opiates after several painful, failed treatment attempts, each more destructive than the last. He long used cannabis as a form of therapy — methadone did not work for him, nor did any of the inpatient treatment programmes he tried — but the cruel hypocrisy of decriminalisation meant that although smoking weed was not a criminal offence, purchasing it was. After this relapse, he embarked on a new relationship, and started his own business. At one point he had more than 30 employees. Then the financial crisis hit. I met Raquel and Sareia — their slim forms swimming in the large hi-vis vests they wear on their shifts — who worked with Crescer na Maior , a harm-reduction NGO. Six times a week, they loaded up a large white van with drinking water, wet wipes, gloves, boxes of tinfoil and piles of state-issued drug kits: green plastic pouches with single-use servings of filtered water, citric acid, a small metal tray for cooking, gauze, filter and a clean syringe. Portugal does not yet have any supervised injection sites although there is legislation to allow them, several attempts to open one have come to nothing , so, Raquel and Sareia told me, they go out to the open-air sites where they know people go to buy and use. The man looked sheepish. He was accompanied by his beaming girlfriend, and waved a warm goodbye to the girls as they handed him a square of foil. In the foggy northern city of Porto, peer support workers from Caso — an association run by and for drug users and former users, the only one of its kind in Portugal — meet every week at a noisy cafe. They come here every Tuesday morning to down espressos, fresh pastries and toasted sandwiches, and to talk out the challenges, debate drug policy which, a decade and a half after the law came into effect, was still confusing for many and argue, with the warm rowdiness that is characteristic of people in the northern region. I was told this again and again in the north: thinking of drug addiction simply in terms of health and disease was too reductive. Some people are able to use drugs for years without any major disruption to their personal or professional relationships. It only became a problem, they told me, when it became a problem. Caso was supported by Apdes , a development NGO with a focus on harm reduction and empowerment, including programmes geared toward recreational users. Their award-winning Check! I was told more than once that if drugs were legalised, not just decriminalised, then these substances would be held to the same rigorous quality and safety standards as food, drink and medication. High-level UNgass meetings are convened every 10 years to set drug policy for all member states, addressing trends in addiction, infection, money laundering, trafficking and cartel violence. By the time of the next session, in , worldwide drug use and violence related to the drug trade had vastly increased. The biggest change in global attitudes and policy has been the momentum behind cannabis legalisation. Massive international cultural shifts in thinking about drugs and addiction are needed to make way for decriminalisation and legalisation globally. But if conservative, isolationist, Catholic Portugal could transform into a country where same-sex marriage and abortion are legal, and where drug use is decriminalised, a broader shift in attitudes seems possible elsewhere. But, as the harm-reduction adage goes: one has to want the change in order to make it. But the opposite happened. The CAT building itself is a drab, brown two-storey block, with offices upstairs and an open waiting area, bathrooms, storage and clinics down below. The doors open at 8. Patients wander in throughout the day for appointments, to chat, to kill time, to wash, or to pick up their weekly supply of methadone doses. Anyone receiving treatment elsewhere in the country, or even outside Portugal, can have their prescription sent over to the CAT, making the Algarve an ideal harm-reduction holiday destination. After lunch at a restaurant owned by a former CAT employee, the doctor took me to visit another of his projects — a particular favourite. Several such UDs, as they are known, have opened in other regions of the country, but this centre was developed to cater to the particular circumstances and needs of the south. Pereira stepped down as director some years ago, but his replacement asked him to stay on to help with day-to-day operations. Pereira should be retired by now — indeed, he tried to — but Portugal is suffering from an overall shortage of health professionals in the public system, and not enough young doctors are stepping into this specialisation. They treat themselves. My function is to help them to make the changes they need to make. The glass doors at the entrance slid open to a facility that was bright and clean without feeling overwhelmingly institutional. This facility, like the others, is connected to a web of health and social rehabilitation services. It can house up to 14 people at once: treatments are free, available on referral from a doctor or therapist, and normally last between eight and 14 days. When people first arrive, they put all of their personal belongings — photos, mobile phones, everything — into storage, retrievable on departure. To the left there were intake rooms and a padded isolation room, with clunky security cameras propped up in every corner. Patients each had their own suites — simple, comfortable and private. In another room, coloured pencils and easels for drawing. A kiln, and next to it a collection of excellent handmade ashtrays. Many patients remained heavy smokers. Patients were always occupied, always using their hands or their bodies or their senses, doing exercise or making art, always filling their time with something. To help bring the body back, there was a small gym, exercise classes, physiotherapy and a jacuzzi. And after so much destructive behaviour — messing up their bodies, their relationships, their lives and communities — learning that they could create good and beautiful things was sometimes transformational. He believed that everyone — however imperfect — was capable of finding their own way, given the right support. He was firm, he said, but never punished or judged his patients for their relapses or failures. Patients were free to leave at any time, and they were welcome to return if they needed, even if it was more than a dozen times. He offered no magic wand or one-size-fits-all solution, just this daily search for balance: getting up, having breakfast, making art, taking meds, doing exercise, going to work, going to school, going into the world, going forward. Being alive, he said to me more than once, can be very complicated. A longer version of this piece appears on thecommononline. By Susana Ferreira. View image in fullscreen. What Britain could learn from Portugal's drugs policy. Read more. Reuse this content. Most viewed.

Portugal where can I buy cocaine