Decriminalisation on the ground: Inside a drug consumption room in Lisbon
The Portuguese authorities have not stopped targeting organised crime. Law enforcement officials The Journal met in Lisbon confirmed that they are still seizing tonnes of drugs annually.
Psychologist Roberta Reis said many of the service users come from work in the evenings. “They come here and they can function normally,” she said. “We asked our service users why they come here and they tell us for dignity. “They don’t want to consume on the streets and they can’t at home because they have children or a partner – no one judges here,” she said. Reis’ team are social workers, nurses and psychologists. They interact in a jovial way with the clients, there is laughter and banter. The atmosphere is friendly. The service users are a mix of well dressed men and women (mostly men) but also clearly struggling and at risk addicts. Most of the service users are in the former group, however – indistinguishable from other residents of this city. We take a seat inside the glass-fronted medical staff area with a view of the separate smoking and injection rooms. The smoking room is a table with chairs, tiled walls and a loud fan in the roof to extract the fumes… “One Drug Consumption Room (DCR) is not enough – there need to be DCRs across the city,” she added. It’s clear from speaking to Reis and her staff that they have immense pride and a sense of purpose and pragmatism in their work. Reis stresses that the drugs issue is only one part of a broader societal issue. Expensive rents are forcing more Portuguese people into homelessness which in turn, Reis believes, creates the circumstances where addictive behaviours flourish. “I think the [drug] policy is working, I think it is effective but we need to improve it. “People are working but not able to pay the rent and they are then pushed onto the streets. No one who lives on the streets in Lisbon right now is ‘just a drug user’. They are people that used to have a house. But no one survives on the streets with nothing – they turn to alcohol or any other kinds of drugs and then it is normal for people to become disorganised. So there needs to be a way to solve these problems because people lose control of these issues and it gets worse.”
Original Article (The Journal):
Decriminalisation on the ground: Inside a drug consumption room in Lisbon
Artwork Fair Use: Celeda
