Dr João Goulão (The Success of the Decriminalisation of Addiction in Portugal) - Episode 138

Behind The Shield

James Geering

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Fitness

4.9 • 667 Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr João Goulão is Portugal's Director of Addiction Intervention and one of the men who spearheaded the decriminalization of all drug use. We discuss how Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, how the people pushed the decision to make users patients instead of criminals and the incredible success they have had.

João Goulão, M.D., is the Director-General of The General-Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (SICAD) in Lisbon, Portugal. SICAD’s main responsibility is to promote the reduction of the use of licit and illicit substances and the decrease of addictions across Portugal. SICAD develops universal prevention strategies across different state institutions (including schools), supports harm reduction mechanisms and collects the latest information and statistical data for submission to the Management Board for the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

Dr. Goulao was originally a family doctor and has become a leader of Portugal’s drug policy reform movement. He was part of the expert panel who developed the initial recommendations for the decriminalization of drugs presented in 1998. He graduated from the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Medicine in 1978, and became a general practitioner in 1983. He joined the Taipas Centre in Lisbon when it was established in 1987 by the Portuguese Ministry of Health for the treatment, recovery and social reintegration of drug addicts. In 1997, he became the national director of the network of drug treatment centers in Portugal. He was also the Chairman of EMCDDA from 2010 to 2015.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome guys to episode 138 of Behind the Shield podcast.
0:03.6	As always, my name's James Gearing.
0:05.4	And this introduction is going to be a little bit longer because I really need to set the stage for my next guest.
0:13.0	As a firefighter paramedic for 14 years, I have lost count of how many people, you know, I've lost as far as patients due to opia overdose
0:22.7	and other drug related either crimes or overdoses.
0:27.5	As a firefighter paramedic, I have also been heartbroken to see how many of my peers in
0:33.0	my profession, law enforcement, have succumbed to this addiction as well and we've lost numerous
0:39.2	people to overdoses so this is very very close to my heart and as you guys probably know if
0:46.7	you've listened to the podcast for a while I look outside our country's barriers for
0:51.3	solutions if they're not within the US.
1:01.7	We had Tom Oberhardt on the show, who was the governor of Bastoy, the prison in Norway,
1:04.5	an incredible prison system that they have over there.
1:11.9	And I was fortunate enough having two of my family members living in Portugal to be told that Portugal actually decriminalized drug use. Now, not drug sales, not drug smuggling, but the user,
1:18.5	the addict, became viewed as a medical patient, not a criminal, unlike what we do here in
1:24.5	England and many other places around the world. And prior to this happening,
1:29.2	they had an epidemic. They went from a dictatorship, then just got absolutely saturated with
1:36.0	drugs and were basically had one of the highest levels of addiction, HIV and all the associated
1:43.1	problems that we see with drugs in the whole of
1:46.5	Europe. When they decriminalize this and what happened was they went to the people, the people
1:51.5	had basically had enough and the people pushed this vote. So imagine that, the actual people of
1:58.3	driving the country. They had forums and cinemas and
2:01.5	theaters and this was pushed through and within about 10 years they had gone
	...

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