Portugal: Socialist activists call for legalization of recreational cannabis use and production

The Socialist Platform for the Legalization of Cannabis, an informal group of activists and supporters of the Portuguese Socialist Party, issued a statement calling on the Socialist government to legalize recreational cannabis as soon as possible to allow for the development of a national industry. Last June, the Left Bloc and the PAN (People, Animals, Nature) introduced two separate bills on medical and recreational cannabis, an initiative that the press release commends. While the legalization of medical cannabis was passed this year, the issue of recreational cannabis remains unresolved despite support for the ruling party.

The press release

Socialist activists are calling on the government to act as quickly as possible. «It is imperative, urgent, and necessary to change the policy paradigm in this sector,» states Luís Filipe Figueiredo in the text; he is the leader of the platform and a member of FAUL (Federation of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area). According to the activists, prohibitionist policies have failed and, moreover, fuel corruption: «The structures designed to combat organized crime have been co-opted by drug trafficking networks and cartels with ties to the worlds of politics and finance,» the text states.

«In a rapidly changing world, and more than 70 years after the implementation of a radical policy to combat drug use and trafficking, all national and transnational policies aimed at combating this scourge have failed irrevocably on every continent and in every country,» the document states. For activists, the goal is to join the global progressive movement toward the liberalization of drug policies, a movement in which Portugal had, in fact, been a pioneer. by decriminalizing the use of all drugs as early as the 2000s. Portugal now needs to begin implementing regulatory policies.

Regarding medical cannabis, activists are calling for the acceleration of industry regulation to defend the interests of domestic producers: «The Portuguese government can no longer ignore the need to support Portuguese citizens in developing this new industrial and agricultural sector by defending domestic producers and consumers and by creating conditions conducive to supplying domestic and international markets that favor domestically branded products.» At present, domestic production has not yet begun. According to the advocates, current legal constraints favor international investments and risk sacrificing small- and medium-sized domestic agricultural businesses to multinational cannabis companies.