Portugal abandons hard line on drugs

Lisbon: Portugal has forced back the frontiers of drugiberalisation in Europe with a law which, at a stroke, decriminalises the use of all previously banned narcotics, from cannabis to crack cocaine.

The new law, which came into effect on July 1, takes a socially conservative country far ahead of much of northern Europe in treating drug abuse as a social and health problem rather than a criminal one.

Vitalino Canas, the drug tsar appointed by the Prime Minister, Antonio Guterres, to steer the law into place, said on Thursday it made more sense to change the law than ignore it, as police forces do in The Netherlands and now experimentally in the Brixton area of south London.

"Why not change the law to recognise that consuming drugs can be an illness or the route to illness?" Mr Canas said. "America has spent billions on enforcement but it has got nowhere. We view drug users as people who need help and care."

He admitted that Mr Guterres was taking a risk, but said Portugal had no real choice. The police had stopped arresting suspects and the courts were dismissing cases against users rather than apply legislation that sent them to prison for up to three years.

Addict Margarida Costa, 35, who has found a home at a drug treatment hostel, said jail never helped her. "In fact, I started taking drugs there," she said.

She is lucky, having escaped from Casal Ventoso, Europe's worst drugs ghetto, where until recently 800 addicts lived rough and up to 5,000 poured in daily to buy their fix. The Government is now bulldozing the ghetto.

Luis Patricio, the psychologist who led the campaign to treat Casal Ventoso as a public health problem, said most countries had the relationship between drugs, crime and jail the wrong way around.

However, the right-wing opposition is predicting a boom in drug consumption and the sudden arrival of thousands of hardened addicts and thrill-seekers from around Europe.

But Mr Canas insisted he was not turning Portugal into Europe's drug paradise.

"We are still fighting a war against drugs."

The police have been been ordered to turn their attention to the drug mafias.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

Answers

The police have been been ordered to turn their attention to the drug mafias.

Easiest way to get rid of them is to undersell 'em.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2001

Easiest way to get rid of them is to deal with it like we do our most popular recreational drug here in the US, alcohol. Let it be licensed for sale all over the place, with plenty of competitors. Put a tax on it, but not too high a tax, and then go after the few remaining illegal stills that try to avoid the tax and license. Now everybody can easily get their drug (alcohol) at a reasonable price, and those who are drug addicted to it (alcoholics) can buy really cheap brands of wine, or vodka, and leave the rest of society alone, instead of being criminals to get their fix, or criminals to move the product itself. Simple, huh? Works great with alcohol, right?

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2001

Yep, Gordon, absolutely right. I'm for that too.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2001