Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name's James Gearing, and this week it is my

absolute honor to welcome back onto the show, Joao Gulau. Now, five years ago, whilst visiting

family in Portugal, I traveled to Lisbon and sat down with Zhuao. In episode 138, you will be

able to hear how they went from the worst addiction problem in Europe to the lowest

by simply decriminalizing addiction. Now, as you will hear us discuss, that doesn't mean that

drugs are for sale in stores now. It simply means that when an addict is caught with the

user's amount, rather than being thrown in prison, they are educated on the resources

available to them, including addiction counseling, mental health counseling, and job creation.

So as we reconvene five years later, we discuss a host of topics.

From the impact of the pandemic through Portuguese eyes, the ripple effect when it comes to the

mental health crisis, fighting smuggling, how the withdrawal of support and funding has negatively

impacted his program, and so much more. Now before he gets this incredible conversation,

as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you

listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five-star

rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free

library of almost 800 episodes now. So all I ask in return is that you

help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person

on planet Earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I welcome back,

Zhuao Gulau. Enjoy. Well, in fact, those are the big issues.

How are we moving forward and how could we deal with the difficulties that we faced in the last few years with the COVID and now with this new financial crisis caused by the war and how difficulties that the citizens are facing impacts mental health and drug use.

And I would say that, in fact, we are facing some difficulties.

At a given point, I would say that the government and even the society was convinced that the problem of drugs in Portugal was controlled, was under control and everything was in place what we needed.

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