These days, Casal Ventoso is an ordinary blue-collar community -- mothers push baby strollers, men smoke outside cafes, buses chug up and down the cobbled main street.

Ten years ago, the Lisbon neighborhood was a hellhole, a "drug supermarket" where some 5,000 users lined up every day to buy heroin and sneaked into a hillside honeycomb of derelict housing to shoot up. In dark, stinking corners, addicts -- some with maggots squirming under track marks -- staggered between the occasional corpse, scavenging used, bloody needles.

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PORTO, Portugal-This country's move to decriminalize illicit substances-Europe's most liberal drug legislation-turns 10 years old this month amid new scrutiny and plaudits.

Portugal's decriminalization regime has caught the eye of regulators in Europe and beyond since it was implemented in 2001. Proponents credit the program for stanching one of Europe's worst drug epidemics. Critics associate it with higher crime and murder rates. Approaching a decade in force, it is providing a real-world model of one way to address an issue that is a social and economic drag on countries world-wide.

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The Evidence From Portugal Since 2001 Is That Decriminalisation of Drug Use and Possession Has Benefits and No Harmful Side-Effects

IN 2001 newspapers around the world carried graphic reports of addicts injecting heroin in the grimy streets of a Lisbon slum. The place was dubbed Europe's "most shameful neighbourhood" and its "worst drugs ghetto". The Times helpfully managed to find a young British backpacker sprawled comatose on a corner. This lurid coverage was prompted by a government decision to decriminalise the personal use and possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The police were told not to arrest anyone found taking any kind of drug.

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Tory leader Michael Howard has pledged a future Conservative administration to reverse the government's relaxation of the cannabis laws, to take effect next week, dismissing the reform as "absurd" and confusing.

But in Portugal, where the possession and use of small quantities of any drug - hard or soft - was decriminalised by the then Socialist government in 2001, the centre-right coalition that took power a year later opted to leave the reform in place.

"The government came in thinking in terms of destroying these measures, but once such steps are taken, you don't go back," Socialist Party leader Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues told BBC News Online.

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Portugal was a little uneasy hosting the European Championship soccer match between England and France this year, but not because of terrorist threats. Instead, rowdy English soccer fans-infamous for rioting-put fear into the hearts of Lisbon's police force. Lisbon's response? Smoke them out.

Police let fans know before the game that no arrests would be made, no warnings would be issued if fans were found smoking pot. Cops even promised not to confiscate the ganja. The policy was pretty much smoke 'em if you've got 'em. On the other hand, police swore to lock up every drunk they could find.

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Any doubts that Europe takes its sports far more seriously than the United States went up in smoke last week.

To discourage rowdy British hooligans from rioting during the Euro 2004 soccer tournament held in Lisbon, Portuguese police announced beforehand that they wouldn't arrest or detain visiting Brits who were spotted smoking marijuana because the drug decreases violent urges, according to British newspaper The Guardian.

In other words, they're actually giving England supporters the OK to get stoned in the stands.

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Apparently the plan worked. Police reported no arrests or trouble during France's 2-1 win over England in their opening Euro 2004 match. The plan? It was widely reported, including in The Guardian, that Portuguese police in Lisbon would turn a blind eye to soccer fans who openly smoked pot before or during the game.

Apparently, a stoned crowd is a happy crowd. Cops, however, planned to crack down on drunk supporters. Alan Buffry of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance said: "If people are drinking they lose control; if they smoke cannabis they don't. Alcohol makes fans fight. But cannabis smokers will be shaking hands and singing along together."

[end]

Quick! Detroit Police: Distribute Marijuana Immediately!

Fifty-thousand English soccer fans have followed the country's side to Lisbon, Portugal, for the Euro 2004 tournament, and police braced themselves for serious trouble as England met France in a first-round game Sunday. But even as an estimated 15,000 people jammed the Rossio, Lisbon's town square, in an impromptu pre-match party, and even as France scored twice in injury time for a stunning 2-1 win, all was peaceful, blissful, friendly, groovy.

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A Year Ago Lisbon Decriminalized Drug Use. Views Differ On Whether The Policy Is Effective.

PORTO, PORTUGAL - In the shadowy labyrinth of cobblestone streets around this port city's 12-century Se cathedral, heroin addicts have long been selling drugs and shooting up. Police had hoped that the narcotics-infested neighborhood would change after Portugal's decision to decriminalize the use of all drugs. But a year after the sweeping initiative took effect, they say the scene, and their jobs, have changed little.

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LISBON -- The last time the cops nabbed Miguel, he was carrying one envelope with several grams of heroin and another with a slightly smaller stash of cocaine. "I thought, 'Oh Lord, here we go again,' " Miguel said, grimacing at the memory. "I figured I was headed straight back to Leiria," the dank national prison where he has served two terms on drug charges.

As it turned out, Miguel did not do another stretch behind bars -- not because of a clever defense lawyer, but because of Portugal's fundamentally new battle plan in the long-running war on drugs: This nation of 10 million has decriminalized all drug use.

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Separating The Crime Of Drug Dealing From The Offense Of Using

LISBON, Portugal - Afonso Henriques, a Rastafarian and carpenter, began using marijuana when he was 11 and started smoking heroin at 21. He became an intravenous heroin user a few years ago and developed a fierce, uncontrollable habit.

Mr. Henriques, 41, is tired. He still loves getting high, but he can't bear the pain in his kidneys and stomach when he wakes up each morning. He knows he can no longer work and can only hope to make money by criminal pursuits. He wants to stop using heroin.

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In Portugal, since July 1, the possession or use of any type of drugs - hard or soft - has no longer been a crime, although dealing remains a criminal offence.

Consuming drugs is still illegal, but anyone caught with up to 10 daily doses of any drug for their own use is not arrested, does not appear before a court, and cannot go to jail.

Instead they are taken to a police station where their details are noted and they are served a notice to attend a hearing at one of 18 specially created regional commissions.

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A new Law Focuses On Treating Drug Users, Rather Than Jailing Them.

When Alberto de Oliveria was stopped in the Lisbon metro recently, he feared the worst: Being caught with heroin could mean a return to jail. "I was afraid," he recalls. "But the police didn't arrest me. They just sent me to a drug commission that told me I needed treatment."

Mr. Oliveria is one of the first to benefit from a new law, in effect since July 1, that focuses on trying to rehabilitate drug users. Portugal has become the first European country to decriminalize the use - but not sale - of all drugs, from cannabis to crack cocaine.

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Narcotics: Even Injecting Heroin Is No Longer A Crime. Critics Fear An Influx Of Foreign Addicts.

LISBON -- Agostinho Miguel Teixeira, a heroin addict, spoke in amazement about what happened when police caught him shooting up with a friend the other night.

"They started to help us," the 28-year-old said. "One of them turned on his flashlight and pointed to our arms so we could do it easier, because it was really dark. The other said: 'Don't worry, we're not here to give you trouble. Do your stuff and then give us the syringes and come with us to the police station.' "

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Victor cannot quite believe his luck. For eight years he's been a heroin and cocaine addict in Portugal's Algarve, frequently arrested and once imprisoned. Now, even though he's been caught red-handed with a stash of drugs, he finds himself up before a social worker and a psychologist instead of a judge and jury.

This is Portugal's controversial new policy of tolerance in action: however hard the drugs you take, you won't be sent to jail.

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Lisbon: Portugal has forced back the frontiers of drug liberalisation in Europe with a law which, at a stroke, decriminalises the use of all previously banned narcotics, from cannabis to crack cocaine.

The new law, which came into effect on July 1, takes a socially conservative country far ahead of much of northern Europe in treating drug abuse as a social and health problem rather than a criminal one.

Vitalino Canas, the drug tsar appointed by the Prime Minister, Antonio Guterres, to steer the law into place, said on Thursday it made more sense to change the law than ignore it, as police forces do in The Netherlands and now experimentally in the Brixton area of south London.

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Addicts Treated As Health And Social Problem

Portugal has forced back the frontiers of drug liberalisation in Europe with a law which, at a stroke, decriminalises the use of all previously banned narcotics, from cannabis to crack cocaine.

The new law, which came into effect on 1 July, takes a socially conservative country with traditional Catholic values far ahead of much of northern Europe, including Britain, in treating drug abuse as a social and health problem rather than a criminal one.

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The Pitfalls Of A Radical New Approach To Addiction

THE sight of Nick, a backpacker from Blackburn, sprawled on a Lisbon street corner with enough heroin in him to anaesthetise a horse is a poor advertisement for Portugal's new tolerant drugs regime.

Nick, 19, mumbles that he learnt about the change from a website. Two policemen who witness his collapse are not sure what to do with him, as from this week they have been told not to arrest anyone found taking any kind of drug.

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LISBON - The neighborhood is a labyrinth of filthy alleys winding past clumsily built shacks and grubby tents. It stinks of garbage and urine. A woman shampoos her long hair in a public fountain. Young men lean on a wall and mainline heroin in broad daylight.

This is Casal Ventoso, the Portuguese capital's notorious drug district, a slum layered on the slopes of one of Lisbon's seven hills where poor families live side-by-side with the drug trade.

But after more than a decade as a narcotics haven, the neighborhood is gradually being cleaned up and turned into a leafy and lawned "green zone." The government is demolishing the shacks and expects to move the remaining 1,200 families into brand-new homes by the end of next year. About a third of the 50-acre slum has been cleared, and 800 people are already living in new houses.

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