Portuguese Drug History
by Sergio Inacio
During the sixties, when the use of drugs arose in the majority of the developed countries, Portugal was ruled by a totalitarian government, supported by systematic repression and censorship. That government, defeated in 1974 after was been for forty years in charge, maintained an international policy defined by the expression ‘proudly alone’. Portugal had turned to himself, without suffering many external influences. (Coca-Cola was prohibited for instance.) To finishing the picture, the low income earned by the population, most of them living in a rural environment contributed to confine the phenomenon to a restrict group of students or physicians.In 1973, when the use of narcotics and psychotropics drugs still standing very scarce, we may say that was virtualy non existant, the government turn out one first and inexplicable campaign, having as slogan the phrase "drug-madness-death". However the colonial war gives a chance to many Portuguese soldiers made contact with marijuana. In the second half of the seventies, after the defeated of the totalitarian government, many Portuguese returned from the ex-colonies, and few of then with the habit of smoking cannabis. In 1976, and the new government runs another campaign. It's the second that happened in Portugal. It is referred as "the marijuana calamity". At that time the drug phenomena appears more visible, most of the prescription drugs was sold freely at the pharmacies and abused, and the use of cannabis were reported at the young events like the Genesis concert in Cascais in 1974. In the end off seventies, beginning of eighties, the use off cannabis is installed in Portugal, first mainly hash, but during the eighties the grass also have a great availability. During the first half of the eighties the use of cannabis grows moderately and the heroin and cocaine were used only in restricted groups. In spite of the drug users continuous growing, there was not sensible social and human degradation consequences of that. The perception of this phenomenon was mainly influenced by: the irreverent behaviour of the youth, the most visible of them with a manifest lack of respect and responsibility, the visibility of hash traffic, and the deficient information based mainly on the United States strategies in the seventies. This situation blast in a condemnation process made by public opinion and institutions, leading to a great police repression. In the end of the eighties, early nineties, the growth of Portuguese economy, gave the conditions to the massive introduction of heroin in Portugal. The distribution network devoted to the hash traffic, was easily seduced to the heroin traffic. This change in the market spreads quickly and vassalize a large number of cannabis users. The change of the demand has been induced by the traffickers' pursuit the large profit gave by the heroin traffic over the hash traffic, meanwhile hardly repressed by the government. The implantation of heroin abuse started a social and human degradation process, involving an increase of criminality, an extreme visibility of the degradation of the heroin abusers, and an insecurity feeling generalised to the majority of population. The latent insecurity, mixed with the great traffic visibility and police inoperatibility to solve the problem was so dramatic, which lead to an increase of the violence. The population living in some places affected by the traffic, organised in civil army try to banish the users from their streets in a way something violent. In the other hand, drug users, cannabis or heroin, are turned to victims of police officer abuses. This institution which has not controlled the problem legally, succumbed to the pressure of the circumstances and to the bad civil preparation of the officers, went toward a currently use of physic aggression in order to discourage the consumption. Meanwhile, the cocaine found a market in Portugal. This market is small and less visible than the heroin market, but is a growing market. Specially because Portugal is one entrance to the European market, is expected an internal cocaine traffic increase and consequently an increase of cocaine use. Lately the drug use also spread from the traditional urban centers to the rural ones.