The President of the Republic announced today that he will promulgate the drugs law, validated by the Constitutional Court, stressing that parliament differed from the government on the “sensitive point of defining the quantity of drugs detained”.
“The President of the Republic, after the Constitutional Court decided to disregard the position of the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of Madeira, thus clarifying an issue that was important for the application of the diploma, will proceed to promulgate, as soon as it is sent to him, the Decree that clarifies the sanctioning regime regarding the possession of drugs for consumption regardless of the quantity and establishes regular deadlines for updating the regulatory rules,” can be read on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic.
Despite the decision to enact it, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa draws attention to “the fact that the Assembly of the Republic has diverged from the government on the sensitive point of defining the quantity of drugs held by those who have to be considered mere consumers or effective traffickers”.
The Constitutional Court (TC) today validated the constitutionality of the parliamentary decree that decriminalized synthetic drugs and made a new distinction between trafficking and consumption, following the request for a preventive abstract review presented by the President of the Republic.
At the public reading held at the Ratton Palace in Lisbon, reporting judge Carlos Medeiros Carvalho announced that the “TC unanimously decided not to rule on the unconstitutionality” of the regulatory rules of the decree approved by the Assembly of the Republic on July 19.
The explanation for the decision was reinforced by the president of the TC, José João Abrantes: “As I understand that, for the purposes of the duty of prior hearing (…), the matter does not appear to involve issues concerning the autonomous regions”, since Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had justified the sending of the matter with the “lack of consultation” with the governing bodies of the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores.
On August 17, when he sent this law to the Constitutional Court, the head of state also expressed “reservations on a matter of content, and in line with the understanding that goes back to the time of President Jorge Sampaio, now considering, in particular, the special incidence of the new types of drugs in the Autonomous Regions, the sanctioning regime adopted in them and the regionalization of health services, which are fundamental for the application of the new law”.
In the request sent to the Constitutional Court at the time, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed the need for the autonomous regions to be consulted on this law because, as well as having a “significant administrative dimension”, it also has “serious public health implications, with recognized regional specificities”.
The head of state also argued that the governments of the autonomous regions were heard in the drafting of the two pieces of legislation amended by this decree-law, which were approved in 1993 and 2000.
At the beginning of August, Madeira asked the head of state not to enact the new drugs law, claiming that it “violated the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic”.
The law was approved by the Assembly of the Republic on July 19 with PS, IL, BE, PCP, PAN and Livre voting in favor, Chega against and PSD and Socialist deputies Maria da Luz Rosinha, Carlos Brás, Rui Lage, Fátima Fonseca, Catarina Lobo, Maria João Castro, Tiago Barbosa Ribeiro, António Faria and Joaquim Barreto abstaining.
