every nation has its own way of trying
to stop people smashing their lives to
pieces with drugs
in this episode we focus on two of the
most radically different approaches to
drug policy on the planet
it's rehab versus prison to
criminalization versus death
portugal versus the philippines
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in 2001 portugal decided to stop
treating drug users like despicable
pariahs
the government agreed that no matter
what drug you were caught taking whether
it was coke
smack pingers or puff you would no
longer be punished
overnight they decriminalized the
personal use and possession of all drugs
why back in the 1990s portugal faced a
barely comprehensible crisis
it was estimated that one in every 100
people in the country is addicted to
heroin
everything else they tried failed so
they tried decriminalization
i think a lot of the motives for the for
the policy were that
at that time there was a lot of concern
about heroin use
and the problems that families were
having with that people knew their
brothers their sisters their cousins
their friends
knew someone or were themselves having
problems with heroin and the idea was
not to try and split society up into the
people who are who aren't using heroin
but to bring people who had problems
into the fold and help them with those
problems
rather than continue criminalizing them
at the other end of the spectrum
you have the philippines when the
filipino people elected rodrigo duterte
president in 2016
they made a choice they'd grown tired of
those dealing and using methamphetamine
and the duterte they found a man eager
to hand out some punishment
these guys are being searched really
thoroughly they're looking in
all of their pockets their baseball caps
asking them to stick their tongues out
so they can see if they're hiding drugs
in their mouth
he's a user yes how do you know
he looks like one you can tell by the
way that he looks
are you worried about your your safety
now
for the last four years the news in the
philippines has been more or less the
same
every day at night the police go into
the slums
and people are shot dead my campaign
against drug
will not stop until the last drug lord
voted in on promises to kill every drug
dealer and user in the country
duterte is on a mission to wipe out
crystal meth known locally as shabu
in the summer of 2020 the un reported
that between
8 000 and 25 000 people had already lost
their lives
in the president's relentless war on
drugs people killed either by the
national police force
or assassins
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in portugal drug users are treated like
healthcare patients
unwell individuals who need help and
rehabilitation before they're integrated
back into society
in duterte's philippines thousands of
people with similar problems
are killed on the streets each year by
those who are meant to protect them
every night someone lies you just have
to wait
but which approach is most effective a
compassionate and rational approach
underpinned by a nuanced understanding
of human addiction and the financial
benefits of treating it
or killing people until the bad drugs go
away these days
the portuguese approach is seen as an
example for other countries to follow
after registering over 280 drug deaths
in 2016
norway signaled its intent to follow
portugal's lead towards
decriminalization in a landmark vote
last year we had double amount of people
dying from overdoses
than in traffic so it's a huge problem
but what's your ambition if you use
illegal drugs you get a quick response
from
society you meet with uh with skilled
people from the health
system and you get and you get help
some countries have gone even further
than decriminalization in 2013
uruguay became the first country on
earth to legalize recreational cannabis
i know that you're against smoke
marijuana but it's legal to do it
recreationally
and i'm wondering do you mind if i do a
j por favor
no nothing
but portugal wasn't always so chill
about drug takers
its decriminalization act was kind of a
last resort
for decades things were far less lenient
the country's heroin problem has its
roots in the events of 1974.
when the authoritarian regime of antonio
salazar ended in a military coup
suddenly portugal was open to the world
after 40 years of imposed ignorance and
isolation
the modern world came flooding in that
sounds good
but culture shock was inevitable under
salazar coca-cola had been banned
and he needed a license to own a
cigarette lighter to say portugal wasn't
ready for class a drugs was an
understatement
their arrival however was inevitable
portuguese soldiers returned from the
country's newly independent colonies
with mysterious narcotics the most
damaging of these
was heroin fast forward 15 years and
these were the scenes in lisbon's casal
bentozo neighborhood
if you visited in the 1990s you might
find as many as 5 000 addicts wandering
the streets
scoring smack shooting up and dozing off
back then
casaubentozo was europe's foremost
open-air drugs market
and nationwide the numbers made for
dismal reading
a hundred thousand heroin addicts the
largest hiv infection rate in the eu
a surging prison population over half of
which were drug offenders
only after years of punishment did
portugal decide to try something
different
decriminalization made 2001 a
transformative moment for portuguese
society
today the numbers look a lot better
deaths caused by overdose have fallen
dramatically
in 2015 portugal had the lowest
drug-induced death rate in western
europe
10 times lower than the uk and 50 times
lower than the us the national health
ministry estimates that the number of
active heroin addicts
has dropped from 100 000 in 2001 to
fewer than 25 000 today
however every society has its own story
the philippines isn't portugal when the
u.n says as many as 25 000 people have
been killed in duterte's war on drugs
it's tough to process how a country
could have got to that point
the third day remains really popular in
the country
just like in many parts of the world
drugs are seen as an evil
and people who use drugs are seen as
people who deserve to be punished
and if necessary be killed maybe there
are further clues to be found in the
recent history of the philippines
in 2015 filipino police arrested a man
named horatio hernandez herrera
an alleged third in command of mexico's
infamous sinaloa drugs cartel
traditionally the drugs market in the
philippines has been controlled by
chinese crime syndicates
herrera's life imprisonment on
trafficking charges suggested mexican
cartels were also now working to flood
the philippines with meth
what's more it seemed that those tasked
with stopping that happening
the police the judiciary politicians
were not as vigilant as they might have
been
and what do you think it is about the
philippines that is so attractive to
these foreign cartels
they perceive corruption among the
pillars of the criminal justice system
one mayor was arrested transporting
hundreds of kilograms of meth
using the local ambulance of the
municipality
there were even reports that cops were
actively protecting the drug dealers do
the police often
try and break up your operation
yes manila's poorest population are
scared now but they were scared before
duterte too
of local gangs and dealers and foreign
traffickers like herrera
gangs don't fear them yes the guns don't
fear those drug peddlers don't fear
if the death penalty should come back in
our
justice system i think
the best so are you worried for your
safety by doing it yes
of course i'm very much worried with my
safety my whole family is
living in this area in june of 2019
a poll found that 82 of filipinos
surveyed was satisfied with duterte's
war and shabu
but understanding why a policy might
have become popular
isn't the same thing as being able to
say it works in 2017
romeo karamat oversaw the deadliest day
of duterte's tenure so far
he was police chief in the manila
district where 32 people were killed in
24 hours
three years later karamat in his new
role as head of drug enforcement for the
national police force
gave an interview to reuters he admitted
the violent approach was failing
and the drug supply was still rampant
street prices for shabu are actually
lower than when the war on drugs began
in 2016
and users and dealers continue to buy
and sell even under pain of death
meanwhile filipino prisons remain rammed
with drug offenders this is manila's
quezon city jail
over 3500 inmates are packed into a
space built for just 800.
under duterte prison populations as well
as death rates of drug
users are booming how would you measure
the success of a drug policy
if you're aiming for spacious prisons
safer streets and fewer addicts
as is the case in portugal then the
philippines is categorically failing
however if your gauges are voter
approval ratings and dead drug users
maybe duterte's war starts to look a
little more like success
we'd like to congratulate drugs for
winning the war on drugs
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