An increase in gang violence and open-air drug use is changing politicians’ minds
Cocaine?” In central Lisbon, even your grey-haired correspondent gets the pitch. The Vale de Alcântara, a valley housing a main road alongside a park, is strewn with garbage and drug paraphernalia. Dealers and users huddle in a strip of dilapidated buildings. Nearby is a government-run facility where they can get high safely. But it is often full, and some like it better outside.
But second thoughts are rising. In some countries open-air use of hard drugs is more visible; in others, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, gang violence is up. This has led some politicians to go back to advocating tougher law enforcement.Portugal’s reforms are still seen as successful. In the 1990s, notes João Goulão, head of the country’s drug-policy unit, perhaps 1% of the population used heroin.
Heroin was the more dangerous problem. In the 1980s authorities promoted harm reduction, the world’s first needle-exchange programme, substitution therapy with drugs such as methadone, drug-testing centres and safe-injection rooms. In the early 2000s a few hundred addicts who repeatedly failed substitution therapy were even given free heroin at government facilities. This seemed to work: by 2010 the heroin-addict cohort was small and ageing.
And although heroin use has declined, party drugs are on the rise. The number of Dutch adults who said they had used cocaine in the past year rose from 1.6% in 2015 to 2.4% in 2022. The rise of cocaine has led to a rise in violent trading. On February 28th a Dutch court ended the country’s biggest ever drug-gang trial, sentencing Ridouan Taghi, a syndicate boss, to life in prison for ordering a string of killings.
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