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What Happened When Portugal Decriminalized Drugs?

March 01, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Following a bloodless coup in the 1970s, Portugal saw an influx of drugs come into the country, resulting in one percent of the population being addicted to heroin. Fourteen years ago, the country took a somewhat unprecedented approach to solving its significant problem: decriminalizing all drugs.

"If you were found in possession of less than a 10-day supply of anything --- from marijuana to heroin --- you would be sent to a three-person commission to talk about drug addiction. It was a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker, and the commission would recommend treatment or a minor fine, otherwise you were sent off without penalty," Glenn said Wednesday on radio.

Addicts, rather than being imprisoned, received treatment.

While the problem became worse at first, the long-term results have been somewhat impressive. Both the use of drugs and drug-induced deaths have dropped significantly.

"It's actually working in Portugal. It's the Libertarian dream," Glenn said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: You know the story of Portugal. Portugal had a really bad authoritarian regime back in the '70s. There was a bloodless coup. I think it was the Carnation Rebellion or something like that. Bloodless coup takeover. It went unstable for a while.

And drugs -- because they had -- Portugal had let go of all of their colonies, all of the soldiers come back -- and they being -- bring all kinds of drugs with them.

And so this liberalization of -- of -- or democratization of their country and the influx of all these guys coming in from all over the world with all these drugs, one percent of the Portuguese population was addicted to heroine. One percent.

Remarkable.

STU: Wow.

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: So they did what we do. And they did a War on Drugs. And it got worse. And so they made it even stronger. And another War on Drugs. And it got worse.

And so in -- I think it was 2001, they started something -- yeah, 2001, they started -- they decided, let's go the entirely opposite way. Let's decriminalize all drugs.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: So if you were found in possession of less than a ten-day supply of anything from marijuana to heroine, you would be sent to a three-person commission to talk about drug addiction. It was a lawyer, a doctor, and a social worker, and the commission would recommend treatment or a minor fine, otherwise you were sent off without penalty.

Vast majority of time, no penalty. You just go in front of these guys, and they were like, what were you doing? I don't know. I just had some drugs. My friends and I were going to party.

Okay. Go ahead.

If you're addicted to heroine, you get treatment. If you're addicted, you get treatment.

You know, if you're a criminal, then, you know, you might receive a penalty.

So what has -- what has happened? At first, things got worse. For the first year, everybody was like, "Heroine, I can buy it over-the-counter. I'm going to buy heroine." At first it got worse.

JEFFY: Which you would expect.

PAT: So they literally legalized --

GLENN: Everything.

STU: Well, they decriminalized it.

PAT: They decriminalized.

GLENN: They decriminalized.

So was it available without a prescription?

GLENN: No.

PAT: No.

GLENN: Yes. Well, you would just buy it, but it wasn't illegal to go to a drug dealer and buy it.

STU: Well, I mean, I think the way that works, you can't go buy it at stores. You can't go to like the heroine store. But if you get caught with it, they don't put you in prison.

GLENN: Correct.

PAT: Okay. That's decriminalization.

GLENN: It's still black market.

PAT: That's not legalizing. It's just saying, we find you with it, we're not going to put you in jail for it.

GLENN: Correct. So here is -- if you look at the charts -- I don't even know, how would you describe this chart, boy? This is the use of drugs, and these are the drug-induced deaths.

STU: Both dropped.

GLENN: Significantly.

STU: Yeah, particularly the deaths dropped significantly.

GLENN: It's actually working in Portugal. It's the Libertarian dream. It is stop spending all the money and spending the money on the war. Spending the money on prison. Spending the -- the time and energy, trying to stop the criminals across the border, which we are just making into billionaires. Stop it.

Do what we did with prohibition. Reverse it. And all of those problems go away. And let people handle it themselves with some government intervention, where if you're really seriously addicted, then we give you treatment.

He talked about treatment last night.

STU: Yeah, and it does seem like -- because there's been some reporting on the fact that they might go and start -- you know, implementing and following through with the federal laws on marijuana again. Because obviously a lot of states have decided on their own that they're no longer going to worry about marijuana.

PAT: And there's going to be more and more.

STU: And there's going to be more and more.

PAT: It's going to spread.

STU: Yes. However, it's still federally illegal. So if you're in Colorado and you have some, well, you might be okay with Colorado law, but you're not okay with federal law. And so they could still theoretically go and try to enforce that.

GLENN: Federal law -- federal law trumps --

PAT: Yes. As the supremacy clause notes, federal law does -- it doesn't -- they don't call it, it trumps the state law, but it supersedes. And they don't even say it supersedes, but it does. I mean, it just does.

STU: It does.

GLENN: Federal law is the law of the land.

PAT: Yes.

STU: So the current way -- with Obama, he basically -- and he didn't entirely ignore it. There were still some -- still some issues with that, that Libertarians complained about loudly. But overall, he basically said, well, if you're going to have it illegal there, we're not doing federal raids for marijuana.

GLENN: You can't -- we have to -- we have to justify our laws. We have to justify -- we have to decide. If the states are going that way, well, then -- I mean, you want to talk about states' rights. Nobody seems to have a problem with the states' rights there.

Then fine.

But you cannot have the federal law and the state law in conflict. You want to talk about a constitutional crisis -- everybody in the press was talking about a constitutional crisis. The first day that Donald Trump come in --

STU: He said something bad about. The media. Constitutional crisis! No, that's not a constitutional crisis.

GLENN: No, that's not a constitutional crisis. This is. This is a constitutional crisis.

PAT: Yeah, it is. When you have states and any municipality ignoring federal law with immigration, ignoring federal law with drug laws, you're going to have chaos.

GLENN: Right. So you have to -- the federal government has to decide: Are we going to hold these cities accountable for disagreeing, or are we going to change the federal law?

STU: Right. I mean, there's also, you know, Supreme Court element and other things that can happen before constitutional crisis. But, I mean, there is that -- it's a bizarre standard. And it's happening the same thing -- sanctuary cities are another example of it.

PAT: Yep.

STU: It's really the same premise.

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.