Drug use in Lisbon is on the rise among migrants and youth

According to organizations working in the field, drug use among migrants and young people is on the rise in Lisbon.

The director of Ares do Pinhal, an NGO that runs the only comprehensive support service targeting people who use drugs, based in Lisbon, stresses in statements to Lusa that the number of affected migrants is “growing every day.” .

These are mainly people from South Asia, where opium is “culturally normal”, and who in Portugal seek equivalent substances such as smokable heroin, portrays Elsa Belo, responsible for the space installed in Quinta do Loureiro (Alcantara), which provides a range of services, including assisted consumption wards, for an average of up to 300 people per day.

It turns out that the average age of these migrants is about 20 years old, which is significantly lower than the average age of other consumers, a situation that Elsa Belo considers “much more alarming.”

Bruna Alves, coordinator of the only mobile supervised consumption point that operates in five parishes in the eastern part of Lisbon, confirms that there is a “younger consuming population”, although there is also a “longer life expectancy” of consumers.

While emphasizing that in terms of consumption, migrants “need the same response” as everyone else, the social worker at the NGO Médicos do Mundo acknowledges, however, that teams need to have “more time” and other valences.

“A lot of [migrantes] They speak neither English nor French, which also limits our intervention a little. It is difficult for us to understand what limitations they have, what health problems they have. Indeed, this translation was very necessary,” he emphasizes.

Until now, the technicians themselves have tried to “make it as good as possible.”

In Lisbon, he said, everyone knows that there are areas where the “prevalence” of drugs is “high”, but changes in consumption patterns are “constant”.

There is currently an “increase in smoking consumption”, especially crack (cooked cocaine), but, as Bruna Alves points out, “there is still a lot of intravenous use”.

The comprehensive support service in Quinta do Loureiro has been running for two and a half years and currently has around 2,600 subscribers, 85% of whom are men, with an average age of 45 years.

According to official figures, a third of those registered are homeless, many of whom sleep on the outskirts of the neighborhood, and their numbers have also “grown,” says Elsa Belo.