Drug policy of Portugal

[3] The authority to impose penalties or sanctions in these cases was transferred from the police and justice system to so-called dissuasion commissions if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply of that substance.

[7] The 1963 Mental Health Act made reference to the need of facilities for treating drug abuse, but there was no nationwide coverage nor a coordinating structure to achieve so.

[7] In the 1990s, heroin use skyrocketed, resulting in high levels of drug addiction and the spread of the AIDS epidemic.

Estimates for the late 1990s determined there were between fifty and sixty thousand drug addicts out of a population of 10 million.

According to Dr João Castel-Branco Goulão, one of the architects of the decriminalisation policy, a reason why the programme was able to get off the ground was because in Portugal, the problem could not be blamed on any ethnic or economic group in society (as in Brazil and the favelas), allowing other prejudices to be put aside.

They get a kit with clean needle syringes, a condom, rubbing alcohol and a written message motivating for AIDS prevention and addiction treatment.

At programme start, a media campaign was launched by television, radio and the press, and posters were put up in discothèques and bars in order to attract the attention of the target population to the problems associated with drug addiction, in particular HIV transmission through needle-sharing.

[17] Project objectives have been threefold: To reduce frequency of sharing needles and syringes, to change other IDU (Intravenous Drug User) behaviors that create negative attitudes among the population in general, and to change attitudes towards IDUs in the general population to facilitate addiction prevention and treatment.

This facility was the responsibility of the Ministry of Health, and was the first in the network of centres specialising in treating drug addiction which now covers the whole country.

However, the increase in numbers of drug addicts (including an "explosion" at the beginning of the 1990s), together with the growth of AIDS and hepatitis C among this population, led to a change in attitude.

With the exception of occasional activities in a slum area in Lisbon, there were no true low-threshold programs (risk- and harm reduction) prior to 2001.

The offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison as a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply of that substance.

Possession has remained prohibited by Portuguese law, and criminal penalties are still applied to drug growers, dealers and traffickers.

15% ended with some form of a sanction, which could have included a verbal warning, a fine, a loss of professional licenses, among other administrative actions.

[27] There is little reliable information about drug use, injecting behaviour or addiction treatment in Portugal before 2001, when general population surveys commenced.

Until then, there were the indicators on lifetime prevalence amongst youth, collected as part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), and some other (less reliable) data available through the EMCDDA.

[20] There are, however, statistical indicators that suggest the following correlations between the drug strategy and the following developments, starting with the establishment of the NSAFD in 1999: One is for rates and one is for counts.

With the 2001 decriminalization bill, the consumer is now regarded as a patient and not as a criminal (having the amount usually used for ten days of personal use is not a punishable crime).

According to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, illegal drug use among Portuguese teenagers declined after 2001, and 45 percent of the country's heroin addicts sought medical treatment.

In neighboring Spain, small-scale cultivation of cannabis plants for personal use only, is tolerated by the authorities and there are many grow shops across the country selling their products physically and online.

This law made the buying of cannabis seeds from legal and financially transparent online cannabis seed shops based in other European Union member states, such as neighboring Spain or the Netherlands, an unlawful transaction when performed by Portuguese residents.