Night club

Dancing

Music to 10:00:17

Four-thirty in the morning and the party's just starting in Lisbon's trendy docklands.

Places like this attract thousands of clubbers every night. They are the new and glitzy face of this vibrant city.

Ricardo parking cars outside nightclub

Outside the club there’s an utterly different face of Lisbon life. Ricardo Oliveria is earning money for heroin. It's a simple scam: for a fee he protects parked cars.

Once a rich young clubber himself, HE paid addicts to look after HIS car outside these clubs.

TC 10:00:37

ASTON

Ricardo Oliveira

Addict

(Portuguese)

“This is my life now: parking cars, getting money and using drugs, parking cars, getting money and using drugs. Day after day after day.”

Ricardo in car preparing drugs fix

Faced with the worst hard drugs epidemic in Europe the Portuguese government is trying to break the vicious circle in which addicts like Ricardo are trapped - and which already killed his brother a year ago.

In July this year they are taking the radical step of decriminalising the use of soft AND hard drugs.

TC 10:01:06

ASTON:

Joao Sobral

Socialist Party Deputy

(Portuguese)

“Repressive policies haven’t achieved visible results anywhere in the world. So we’re taking a new view – considering the drug addict as a sick person – providing treatment while at the same time cracking down on drug trafficking and money laundering.“

25th April Bridge and slum

Lying beneath Lisbon’s landmark bridge is an ancient slum called Casal Ventoso. It’s visible PROOF that up until now, Portugal’s drug policies simply haven’t worked

ASTON:

Secret filming

TC 10:01:44

Music CUT TO MUSIC

Drug queues etc.

UPSOT

Matrix! Matrix! Matrix!

Woman shouting:

“Here it is girls”

Woman with needles

Police walking down street

UPSOT “Uga! Uga, Uga!”

SUPER TRANSLATION – “PIGS!”]!) –

Matrix sequence

Lead into the end of music with Matrix slo-mo, eye resting on camera button as music ends and freeze.

Secret filming ends 10:03:28

These are known as the steps of death, lined with drug takers they lead into the heart of Casal Ventoso.

This is the path that Ricardo and as many as five thousand other addicts take each day.

It’s a drugs bazaar – everyone here is selling or buying. Strangers are often beaten up. The only way we could film was with a secret camera.

People call this Lisbon’s drugs supermarket. It’s the biggest – and most open – drugs market in Europe.

Each dealer has his doorway – the most popular have long queues waiting to buy. They vie for business – shouting their wares and prices. [WAIT FOR MATRIX CRY]

The whole micro-economy of the drug industry exists here – sellers of needles - and sellers of tin foil line the alleyways.

Word of a rare police patrol is shouted down the alley -

They don’t take much notice of what is going on in Casal Ventoso, and minutes later it’s business as usual.

Dealers rent a doorway for about £100 an hour – but can turn over an astonishing £30 thousand a day.

This man, Matrix, is one of the biggest dealers, one of the most ruthless and the most feared – addicts say he has a lot of blood on his hands.

TC

Street team packing needles

Carlos Fugas set-up / handing out needles

Underlay:

“CV is a sort of open wound in Portuguese society.”

So GREAT is Casal Ventoso’s notoriety, that only one aid team dares work here. Calling themselves simply ‘the street team’, they supply clean needles as best they can, and call in medical help when they discover overdosed addicts.

Carlos Fugas says the street team is trying to help people like Ricardo, whom the rest of Portuguese society shuns.

In vision:

ASTON:

Carlos Fugas

Drug Care worker

“Politicians in Portugal talk a lot about drugs, they use drugs for political and electoral campaigns but they close their eyes to the reality and the reality is very cruel.”

Carlos’ team at work distributing needles

Carlos favours decriminalisation as the only way to help the growing numbers of addicts.

It should not be a crime, he says, being so self-destructive.

But for many addicts there isn’t much that even the street team can do.

Portugal has the highest rate of HIV infection in the EU and is the only country in the region where infection rates are rising. (*1)

In Casal Ventoso’s it is estimated that an astonishing 48% of the addicts are infected.(*2)

It is easy to see why.

Carlos and Ricardo walking

Speedball

Ricardo - like most other drug users here - injects a mixture of heroin and cocaine with lemon juice. They call it speedball.

TC 10:04:50

Underlay

“In the morning, when you wake up, you have a need for drugs and count your money. You don’t have a needle and in CV there’s no one selling them, or if there is they will cost 200 escudos and you just don’t have the money.

You’d rather buy a larger dose and get a used needle, than buying a smaller dose and buying a new one.”

In vision 10:05:18

ASTON:

Ricardo Oliveira

Addict

“I’ve been HIV positive for six years. I have bronco-pneumonia, and I’m living rough. The doctor says my heroin use is probably hiding a number of other diseases - not only the pneumonia.”

Sandra shooting up

Unlike Ricardo, Sandra, has escaped the HIV plague. She knows she’s one of the lucky ones.

TC 10:05:43

Underlay:

“Drugs lead to hospital, prison or the cemetery.”

In vision

ASTON:

Sandra Barros

Addict

“Of those who started drugs with me few have survived. Others are dying from diseases and still more are just waiting for death.”

TC 10:06:08

Photograph of Sandra

Sandra making ribbons

In her late teens and before she started on drugs, Sandra was a part-time model. These days, she says, many of her fellow addicts have turned to prostitution to get money. Something Sandra says she would never do.

Instead she gets HER drugs money through a scam – a deception she goes about quite ruthlessly.

She and her boyfriend make up little AIDS ribbons – then in wealthier shopping streets, they solicit money saying it’s to help children with AIDS.

It’s an appealing cause – and many are deceived by her pitch. Sandra leaves happy she’s closer to her next fix of heroin.

underlay

“I know that cheating people this way is not something … “

In vision

“ but anyway it is better than begging, robbing, prostitution or murder, the way others do, or selling drugs. “Hurting someone else just for one’s own benefit. ”

Port GV’s

With its long coast, many ports and overland routes to the rest of Europe, Portugal is being used more and more as one of the busiest gateways for moving drugs into western Europe.

Most worrying is the quantity of heroin being brought through Portugal by Turkish gangs.

ASTON:

Dr Ferreira Leite

Police Drugs chief

“They want to use the Iberian Peninsular as a sort of conveyor belt - let’s call it that – to distribute heroin to other places – especially the European Union”

Drugs haul

Recently police in Lisbon seized one of Europe’s largest ever drug hauls. A staggering 227 kilos of top-grade heroin worth over ten million pounds on the street.

With the EU’s open trade policies it’s easier for drugs like these to pass into the rest of Europe.

Set-up Maria Jose Pinto

Opposition politician

Opponents of decriminalisation, such as former Member of Parliament Maria Jose Pinto, say the new law will only make matters worse.

TC 10:08:02

ASTON

Maria Jose Pinto

Opposition politician

“We live in the EU, we subscribed to the Schengen Agreement and I think there should be a global policy against drug addiction and not some kind of private Portuguese policies that will provoke an import of risks and problems for Portugal a kind of drugs tourism.”

ASTON:

Joao Sobral

Socialist party deputy

“In Portugal we have the authority, the autonomy and an internal policy that we can follow. We have a problem and we have an obligation to do something to sort it out.“

Parliament exteriors

The decriminalisation bill has already gone through Parliament.

Face to addict on coast

From July possessing up to ten days supply of hard drugs such as heroin will be no more serious than a parking offence.

Tilt down to brand new flats

But alongside decriminalisation the government intends to intensify its campaign against drug dealers.

And the city council has started flattening Casal Ventoso, making way for new flats.

Under the new law they will also provide treatment for addicts – but critics claim that won’t be possible, given the present facilities

TC 10:09:10

ASTON:

Maria José Pinto

Opposition politician

“The main question is prevention, treatment and the reintroduction of the drug user into society. This law, from my point of view, does not solve any of these problems. We don’t have enough treatment centres, we don’t have enough beds, the proposed reintroduction process is dubious and regarding prevention – nothing has been done.”

TC 10:09:26

ASTON: secret filming

Addict with needle in mouth pan to other addict in rain

Walking into crack house

underlay

“First drugs are like a passion, we fall in love with it, then after love comes hate. We love drugs and we hate them at the same time. I love it…”

Secret camera to 10:10:27

As CV is demolished the government will face a new problem – the dispersal of thousands of addicts across the city.

Up to now many have been concentrated in ghettos like Casal Ventoso and its crack houses.

They are full of young people smoking crack and shooting up speedball.

It’s in places like these where many young Portuguese are first introduced to hard drugs.

In the background is the house boss, known as the chef, cooking up the mixture in the corner.

In vision

AST0N:

Sandra Barros

Addict

“ …and I hate it at the same time because it is destroying my life - but I can’t tell you that I don’t like drugs - I like it. I know I have to live with this until the rest of my life.“

Sandra with parents laying table

Underlay

“Those who are already using drugs will keep on going …”

But there is still some hope for Sandra. She lives with her family and she has the support of her parents.

And although she is uncertain whether decriminalisation will help her it could – she says - stop others getting involved in drugs.

Sandra Barros in vision

“…to some extent, but for those who have never used drugs – those who want to experiment - will lose their their curiosity - it will just be a normal thing.”

Ricardo crossing road

Underlay:

“I spend all night crying, all night.”

For Ricardo, though, the future doesn’t look too good. The police have taken away the wrecked car that was his home and his pneumonia is getting worse. Now he sleeps in doorways or wherever he can find a dry place.

In vision

ASTON:

Ricardo Oliveira

Addict

“I think maybe I will die the same way as my brother did. Or even worse, because I am sick, I am HIV positive and he was not, I will probably finish in some alleyway. OK.”

UP music over final words of Ricardo

Music TC 10:11:45

To 10:12:11

Club

dancing

But in Lisbon’s trendy docklands the party goes on.

These clubbers may be safe for now. But will decriminalisation do anything to protect people like them from sinking into the world of drugs? - just as Ricardo and Sandra have done.

Because when it comes to heroin and cocaine as well, it seems that the party’s only just begun.