Hi there, long time no see ...

Left Block is a pro choice, pro drug radical left party. It was the 3rd most voted party in the last euro elections in Portugal and has come with a draft for a new law which legalizes cannabis.

This is a rough google translation corrected in some spots. Full translation can be found here :

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The Left Block (LB) has presented a new draft law to legalize the cultivation and personal consumption of cannabis, and to regulate trading. LB argues that cannabis causes equal or less risk to public health than other legal substances such as alcohol or tobacco, and therefore makes no sense to turn illegal consumers into clandestines.

Taking into account "the features and low degree of damage" of cannabis, LB proposes the regulation of supply and demand to "stop drug traffic and  to protect the consumer and the public health."

LB criticizes the present drug prohibition policies in Portugal and the world, which is responsible for the damage to public health and increased crime levels linked to trafficking and consumption. LB recalls that the decriminalization of drugs approved in Portugal in 2000, was "a step forward in addressing the problem of drugs, but with serious limitations, since it remains" persecutory and punitive "and leaves unresolved many problems associated with trafficking and public health".

According to LB's project, one of the problems in the current law is precisely to allow the confusion between all drugs and a market without rules, "making consumers vulnerable to adulterated substances, easy contact with other more powerful and harmful drugs, access to criminal networks or lack of transparent and credible information . Therefore, LB proposes the legalization of cannabis, acquired at a tax and legal power and the legalization of the cultivation, up to ten plants per person.

The LB proposal states that's up to the local authorities to establish the permit permission for those establishments selling cannabis. They should remain within the distance of at least 500 meters away from schools and be prohibited to under 16 citizens.

Usual rules of competition law cannot be applied to Cannabis, thus production, importation and distribution regulations are required. Trading is regulated, "depriving the distribution network of its commercial aggressiveness." Therefore all brands are prohibited, as well as all means of promoting products and "other forms of direct advertising (promotion, marketing ...) or indirectly (sponsorship...) well known in the media."

As the market controls the substance, it creates two obvious advantages: "On the supply side, a price policy based on a previous price analysis eliminates the licit market traffickers. On the demand side, a clever setting of prices can guide consumers to less harmful products.

See also the draft law of another block, presented in the previous legislature, which proposes the legalization of cannabis for therapeutic purposes

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MAIA said:

Left Block is a pro choice, pro drug radical left party.

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Wait, didn't Portugal legalise all drugs in 2000? What gives?

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Greengage Jam, sunny weather, good food, cheap drugs, no Jacqui "skunk is the worse drug to ever have hit our shores" Smith the Gestapo bitch.

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You know we live in a fucked up world when a pro-freedom group is called "radical".

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Im not really sure how they are expecting to be able to legalise with the treaties still in place

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