Victor dos Santos knows the canals of the historical center of Amsterdam very well.
For years, he has traveled through them,
looking for safe and discreet corners in which to consume
cocaine, heroin, methadone, mushrooms, or anything else that he happened to get his hands on.
Actually, a wonderful place near the water.
The boats came by, and you sat here in the sun to have your shot.
Victor dos Santos has spent practically all his life next to drugs.
Curiosity made him start.
Inexperience, rebelliousness and opportunity caused him to know the darkest side of his addiction.
Now, common sense has forced him to make the decision to stop consuming hard drugs.
Over time, the pleasure produced by each gram turned into pain and suffering.
It took me 24 years before I had it under control.
And I must say that I still use it sporadically, but it is not easy.
You have to be very disciplined.
Do you have 1 gram of marijuana?
Victor's determination to move away from hard drugs
is not in conflict with his usual visits to any of the coffee shops in Amsterdam to buy marijuana or hashish.
He defends, like many others inside and outside of Holland,
the harmlessness of the so-called "soft drugs," as well as the possibility
of being legally able to buy and consume them.
Well, you don't get more stoned if you smoke more marijuana.
You can smoke weed or stuff the whole day, but you still stay as stoned as you get on the first joint.
It is not so that you become more stoned by it.
Victor dos Santos has a Dutch father and a Portuguese mother,
and arrived in the Netherlands during the boom of the politics of tolerance toward drugs
that led to the decriminalization of consumption.
In the Netherlands it was easier for me. First of all, because I have Dutch nationality.
I had no job and was also not able to work.
Therefore, the Netherlands was a solution due to the fact
that I would be insured and that I would receive social benefits.
Also the fact that I would be able to get methadone here if I don't have money to buy heroin.
Drug consumers such as Victor have played, then and now, a very important role
in the formulation and implementation of Holland's drug policy.
When, in this scene, certain signals are received, and we want to check it,
then we regularly have contact with Victor or the others of the drug-users association, MDHG.
If it's correct, then we add it to the advice policy.
Where are we going now? - We are going to a methadone post.
And what are we going to do? - Dora is going to drink some methadone.
Parallel to his daily struggle to survive in a world marked by uncertainty and recklessness,
Victor dos Santos has actively taken part in defending the rights of drug users.
Victor came to the MDHG about four years ago.
He had just come out of jail and had nothing, only a plastic bag with clothes.
He was literally on the street. He came inside and said, "I am homeless and want to do voluntary work."
That often led to him sleeping "on the job," but eventually things got better.
He found a roof over his head, and his drug use was no longer his most important issue.
I believe that, at the moment, he doesn't use drugs at all anymore.
At present, he is doing much regarding counseling and working with students.
He is part of a few consultancies in the city.
He talks with the alderman.
He finds out who is in jail and sends them cards. And many other preventative activities.
He goes to the social service, and visits hospitals. Many such things.
In his job, Victor has witnessed how the situation for people just like him has become more complicated.
The time when the emblematic canals of Amsterdam were a free territory for users
to consume these psychoactive substances is long gone.
You can get a restraining order for certain areas.
Then, you have to remove yourself from those areas
and then you're not allowed to come back within 48 hours.
If they do, they receive another ban, which applies for a week up to three months.
Should someone violate this restriction again, they go to jail.
The tolerance of the Dutch toward drug consumption
has slowly been replaced by a prohibitionist tendency.
The places where hallucinogenic mushrooms were sold
have already been closed down, and the pressure to do away with coffee shops is increasingly stronger.
Victor, with the experience and authority
that enable him to know this world down to the smallest details,
warns about the inconvenience of this tendency.
The use of drugs will stay the same,
maybe even rise, and the danger is then that, at the moment when it is prohibited,
it goes underground, and that brings criminal organizations into the picture.
Victor feels strongly about continuing with his decision to not use hard drugs anymore.
Despite the fact that, on a daily basis, and thanks to his job with the association of drug users,
he is immersed in the same world that he is trying to escape.
I can run away from the use of it as well as the users, but that is not the way it works.
Basically, you have to be able to sit in the center of it.
If you don't want to use drugs, you don't have to.
Running away serves no purpose; it's better to be confronted than to hide from it.
And with this attitude toward life,
Victor dos Santos will continue walking the streets of Amsterdam to
defend and help, through his generosity and expertise, those who speak his same language of life.