The President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, promulgated today the decree that decriminalizes the consumption of synthetic drugs and eliminates the criterion of the amount of dose when differentiating between consumer and dealer.
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The Presidency of the Portuguese Republic disclosed in a statement that the president promulgated the diploma two days after receiving the approval of the Constitutional Court.
The Portuguese head of state had referred the text to the Constitutional Court on July 17, alleging that there was a “lack of consultation” with the Azores and Madeira regions, “without prejudice to the reservations on a matter of content”, when this rule covers “serious public health implications, with recognized regional specificities”.
This rule, approved by the Portuguese Parliament on July 19, decriminalizes the consumption of synthetic drugs by equating them to the regime of classic substancesand eliminates the criterion of the number of doses when differentiating between a consumer and a trafficker, despite the misgivings expressed by specialists.
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It was drawn up based on two proposals from the Socialists, who have an absolute majority, and from the opposition leader, the Social Democratic Party (PSD, centre-right).
The goal is to differentiate between traffickers and users so that they can receive treatmentat a time when psychiatric hospitalizations linked to the use of synthetic drugs have increased, especially in the Madeira and Azores archipelagos.
This approach has already been applied since the year 2000 in Portugal to classic drugs, with a policy based on prioritizing public health.
To paralyze this law, the president of the right-wing Chega party, André Ventura, asked the PSD on Wednesday to gather signatures so that the Constitutional Court revises this decree, although on this occasion he wants it to rule “no on the issue of the formation of this law but on the content itself”.
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“We challenge the PSD, in writing, to join Chega in a request for successive abstract inspection of the constitutionality of this norm,” Ventura reported at a press conference.
EFE
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