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Portugal: Thousands sign petition to legalise cannabis
The Portugal News on Line Thursday 21 Apr 2011 The collection of signatures has been ongoing for almost a year, since May 2010, and will go on until "around" autumn this year. Carla Fernandes, MGM spokesperson in Portugal, said the MGM movement is represented in at least 200 cities around the world, including Lisbon and Oporto, where on the first Saturday of every month a march against the prohibition of cannabis is held. The authors of the petition’s text claim that legalising cannabis could "bring an end to the [country's] deficit" by predicting it could be sold legally, with taxes similar to those of cigarettes. The movement suggests that the fiscal revenue could be used "in prevention politics for hard drugs, addict rehabilitation, or information campaigns." The petition's mission statement further claims that legalising the substance would also bring a stop to trafficking profits, and argues that "prohibition is as effective as it is pernicious", since in most countries where cannabis is illegal "it is still possible to buy it without difficulty" and that drug smuggling networks "are getting rich because of the prohibition." The petition goes on to allege that prohibition makes consumers "more exposed to risks from other types of drugs", suggesting that drugs that are illegally sold on streets "are frequently tampered with and are a risk to public health." Commenting on the movement in 2010, João Goulão, president of the Institute for Drugs and Drug Addiction (IDT) rejected the idea of legalising cannabis and said he thought the current legislation for the substance is "adequate." http://www.theportugalnews.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=1109-18
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