EUROPE SHIFTS DRUG WAR FROM PRISONS TO CLINICS

LISBON -- The last time the cops nabbed Miguel, he was carrying one envelope
with several grams of heroin and another with a slightly smaller stash of
cocaine. "I thought, 'Oh Lord, here we go again,' " Miguel said, grimacing
at the memory. "I figured I was headed straight back to Leiria," the dank
national prison where he has served two terms on drug charges.

As it turned out, Miguel did not do another stretch behind bars -- not
because of a clever defense lawyer, but because of Portugal's fundamentally
new battle plan in the long-running war on drugs: This nation of 10 million
has decriminalized all drug use.

Today Miguel remains a free man, dividing his time between part-time work as
an auto mechanic and outpatient treatment at Lisbon's biggest drug treatment
clinic.

"It's a good deal, because what I really want is to give up drugs," said the
29-year-old addict, who admitted that he has sold small amounts of drugs on
occasion to support his habit. "And I could never do that in prison; in
there, the dealers are living right next to you."

The way Portugal has handled Miguel ( under clinic rules, his full name
cannot be disclosed ) and thousands of people like him reflects a shifting
attitude toward drugs in many West European countries. Increasingly, drug
users are viewed not as criminals, but as victims of a drug culture that
tough laws could not control.

Spain, Italy and Luxembourg have also decriminalized possession and use of
most drugs, and several other countries have effectively done the same by
waiving criminal penalties for addicts who are not found to be dealing.

The director of the European Union's Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug
Addiction, Georges Estievenart, noted that this more tolerant stance applies
not just to users of such "soft" drugs as marijuana, but also to heroin and
cocaine addicts. "The general trend across Europe," Estievenart said, "is
an approach that focuses on the traffickers and does not pursue the drug
user as a criminal. The premise is that it is not in the interest of
society to put these people in jail, where they don't get treatment but do
get fairly easy access to all kinds of drugs.

"Some people refer to this as the 'pragmatic' approach," he said. "It
assumes that drug use is a fact of life that society can't stop, so
policymakers should try to control the damage. The U.S. perspective, of
course, is different. They seek to eliminate drug use by prohibition."

Drug policy is not uniform across Europe. Some countries, notably Sweden
and Greece, have held fairly firmly to a U.S.-style, "just-say-no" approach.
But in most of Western Europe, said Jonathan Cave, a drug policy expert at
Warwick University in Britain, "the general direction is harm reduction
rather than use reduction."

"As the U.S. experience shows, people do obtain and use drugs, even if you
spend billions trying to stop them," Cave said. "So now the goal [in
Europe] is to have it happen without the risk of overdose, of HIV, of random
crime to support the habit."

The ethos of harm reduction was set forth succinctly by Vitalino Canas, the
former Portuguese government minister who has championed the new approach
here. "Of course our message is, 'Don't use drugs at all,' " Canas said.
"But people don't always listen. So then we say, 'If you use, do not use
hard drugs. And if you use hard drugs, do not inject them. And if you
inject, do not share needles.' We think this is more realistic than 'just
say no' all by itself."

Europe's approach has drawn some sharp criticism, not least from the
International Narcotics Control Board, the U.N. agency set up to enforce
several international treaties that ban the sale or use of narcotics.

The control board argues that uniform global prohibitions are essential to
stop the use and movement of drugs. Western Europe's policy amounts to
defeatism, said the board's president, Hamid Ghodse. "It may not be
possible to eliminate all forms of drug experimentation, use and abuse,"
Ghodse said. "But the difficulty of the challenge should not be used as an
excuse not to take action."

U.S. drug enforcement officials have also sniped at European drug policies,
saying that legalization encourages use.

To date, there is little clear evidence as to the new policies' impact. "We
are eagerly awaiting studies," said the EU's Estievenart. "But so far, we
don't have the data to show whether or not the pragmatic solution can reduce
the use of drugs."

The shift toward tolerance began decades ago. In the 1970s, the Netherlands
was a leader, tolerating use of such so-called "soft drugs" as marijuana, or
cannabis, as it is generally known in Europe. The famous "hash houses" that
still draw a steady clientele of locals and tourists opened along the old
canals of Amsterdam.

Customers can order from two different menus. One has coffee -- espresso,
cappuccino and the like. The other has an even wider selection of hashish,
a form of cannabis -- "Nepal," "Kashmir," "Thai," "Kabul." The barman will
also roll joints, which cost about $3 each.

Contrary to Amsterdam's freewheeling reputation, the hash houses tend to be
quiet and controlled. At risk of police closure, the shops strictly enforce
the mandatory age limits -- customers have to be 18 to buy drugs there, two
years older than the legal drinking age.

"Decriminalization has worked fairly well in the Netherlands," said Cave,
the drug policy expert at Warwick University, adding that few hash-house
customers have been found to move on to hard drugs.

Amsterdam's approach to cannabis spread widely through Europe. Today, by
statute or in practice, police officers in most European countries ignore
users of marijuana or so-called "recreational" drugs such as amphetamines
and ecstasy.

The latest convert is Britain, where the Home Office ( roughly the
equivalent of the U.S. Justice Department ) said in March that it would
downgrade cannabis from a "Class B" to "Class C" drug. This would eliminate
criminal penalties and treat possession or use like a parking violation.

With the approval of the central government, some local police departments
in Britain have already taken that step in practice. In the south London
neighborhood Brixton, the local police commissioner announced last year that
his officers would no longer bother to arrest pot smokers. Today it is
commonplace to see young Londoners lighting a "spliff" on the sidewalk
outside Brixton's police station.

A recent study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a London research group,
concluded that the Brixton experiment was a resounding success. Ignoring
marijuana offenses, the study concluded, allowed the police to direct money
and personnel to more serious crimes and "removed a major source of friction
between the police and the community." The report said the more relaxed
approach was "unlikely" to lead to greater use of marijuana or more harmful
drugs. It offered no data to support this conclusion.

For the most part, the non-enforcement policy toward soft drugs has gone
over well with European voters. But Europe's new moves to decriminalize
such drugs as heroin and cocaine can be a tougher political sell.

Nobody knows that better than Canas, an urbane, articulate former law
professor who was a Portugese government minister. It was Canas who led
this socially conservative, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country to abandon
its long-standing prohibitionist policy toward hard drugs.

Canas spent a year or more discussing the plan with the Catholic Church, the
medical community and the police before introducing legislation. The key
political step, he said, was rejecting any suggestion that decriminalization
amounts to a stamp of approval for drugs.

"You have to be very careful about the message you send," Canas explained.
"We do not say, we have never said, that it is good to use heroin or
cocaine. These drugs are still forbidden. What has changed is the means we
use to prevent their use."

Portugal's new drug law is so protective that it rejects terms such as
"addict" or "user." Rather, the person hooked on hard drugs is referred to
as a "consumer."

In the real world, the distinction between "consumer" and "dealer" is not
always clear, of course. To draw the line, Portugal has made rules based on
quantity. Anyone arrested with less than 10 days' personal supply of each
drug is considered to be in possession of the drugs for personal use and is
not prosecuted. Anyone arrested with more than 10 days' supply can be
charged with dealing.

A drug user picked up by the police is initially sent to one of 18 civilian
"drug commissions" around the country. The commission is supposed to deal
with each case individually, but users of cannabis or amphetamines are
generally given educational material and released, while those using hard
drugs are assigned to a treatment program.

A user who accepts treatment faces no further punishment, Canas said. Those
who duck out of treatment, or are caught offending again, face
administrative penalties similar to those for speeding or failing to file a
tax return. Initially, there are fines, beginning at about $22. More
serious violators can lose their driver's license or the right to travel
abroad, or be assigned to such public service jobs as cleaning graffiti off
the city's walls.

Elza Pais, who runs the local drug commission for Lisbon, said most
consumers turned over by police say they want to break the drug habit and
that they readily accept treatment. A few would actually prefer to go to
prison, she said, perhaps because drugs tend to be easier to obtain there.
"But we no longer have that option."

Like most of the people arrested for drug use in Lisbon, Miguel was
dispatched to the sprawling four-story treatment center on Taipas Street in
Lisbon's Bairro Alto neighborhood. There he came under the friendly but
firm ministrations of the center's energetic director, Luis D. Patricio.

"We have inpatients and outpatients here," Patricio said, leading a tour of
his center like a hotel manager showing off a fancy new resort. "We have
young mothers and aging pensioners. We have people who genuinely want to
end their addiction, and people who probably just think it is easier to come
here for methadone than to scratch up the money for a fix on the street.

"But for all of them, we have the same message now: You are not a criminal.
You do not have to fear the government or the doctor. With good treatment
you can get over addiction, and we are going to help you do it."

After two decades of treating Lisbon's drug problem, Patricio said he is
certain Portugal's new policy is the best course. "In prison, you turn an
amateur drug user into a professional," he said. "That's what America is
doing; in Europe, we are looking for other solutions."

Canas, the former government minister, acknowledges that the long-term
result of the policy is unclear. "We only put the law into effect last
July," he said. "Perhaps in a year or so, we will be able to draw some
conclusions about the impact.

"For now, the fact is that we are experimenting."