At the 26th Conference on Harm Reduction, held in Porto last week, there was time to review success stories such as Portugal, but also©to highlight the enormous challenges ahead. ©In addition to bringing this policy to countries where it does not exist, some voices have bet on the continuation of the transition to more©gradual regulation of narcotics. This was endorsed by the UN High Commission on Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who claimed that the “war on drugs has failed” as consumption rises rather than falls. Between 2000 and 2015, there was a 60 percent increase in drug-related deaths: 450,000 deaths in 2015, according to the World Health Organization. The policy included several methods to reduce the spread of HIV, including: harm reduction efforts; inform the public, especially the most vulnerable groups, about the spread of HIV; the establishment of treatment facilities and facilitating access to treatment for drug abusers; The establishment of deterrence commissions to persuade drug addicts to seek treatment and, most importantly, all drug treatment and control units have been reorganized into a comprehensive unit. In addition, the current practice of exempting addicts from drug addicts has been codified in a new law. The law (Law 30/2000) maintained the situation of illegality by the use or possession of a drug for personal use without authorization. For drug addicts, however, the case was considered a misdemeanor. [1] The power to impose penalties or penalties in such cases was transferred from the police and the judiciary to so-called dissolution commissions if the quantity in possession did not exceed a ten-day delivery of this substance. [2] In the European Union, no Member State allows the recreational use of cannabis, even if its use is “tolerated” in so-called coffee shops in the Netherlands. Cannabis can be purchased in these establishments, but no more than five grams per day. However, the country stresses that “all drugs are banned and it is illegal to manufacture, possess, sell and export drugs” and that coffee shops must comply with “very strict laws”. Portugal`s drug policy has achieved many benefits by reducing rates and incidents and improving the infrastructure and sustainable development of health and primary care in the country.

It does not act, countries around the world plan to follow it. In addition to these data, experts have suggested that the time given by police to focus on crimes of a different nature is related to the fact that drug users are no longer prosecuted, which would have been directly ugly, as crime rates have decreased, as has been the case all these years (Hughes and Stevens, 2010). Peers are a link between addicts and the organizations that help them. And personalities like Teixeira`s, whom she associates with the health system. “We serve them, we test for HIV, tuberculosis [another disease that spreads between addicts, under different circumstances, because they usually use together and share the bacillus that travels through the air], we offer them methadone. When they see one of our trucks [Apdes], they already know they can trust us. And it broke down the barriers with the hospital. Many users had the best experience with the health system, were treated inappropriately by professionals who may not have been used to these situations. It took them away from the health care system and was a vicious cycle,” they say. Drugs burst into Portugal at the end of the dictatorship. Perhaps because it was an isolated, oppressed country, unattractive for tourism at©that time. Drugs reached the seventies©, with the freedom to create a real social crisis.

“There was a family without drug addicts,” recalls João Goulo, director of the Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Intervention Service (SICAD). Democratic governments have tried to solve the problem with a heavy hand: zero tolerance for traffickers and also for consumers, on whom the burden of the criminal justice system would ©fall if they were caught red-handed.