Thank you, Chair. It is an honour to join you and this committee

I will use my five minutes, first of all, to try to destroy some myths around the so-called Portuguese model. I'm aware that the way Portugal used to address the heroin epidemic in the eighties and nineties is quite often described as mere decriminalization or, more than that, a liberalization of drug use. However, it is far more than that.

On one side, we did not liberalize the use of substances in Portugal. Drug use is still prohibited. It is not a crime. People do not undergo imprisonment penalties, but there is a set of administrative sanctions that are used to deter people from using drugs.

On the other side, decriminalization is only one part of the system, which constitutes a continuum from prevention to treatment that includes harm reduction policies and reintegration. Even if I consider decriminalization to be a very important part of that, it is mostly a way to get in touch with people who otherwise do not approach the health system or search for any kind of support to change their lifestyles.

With the complete set of policies that we have put in place—and I was happy to have the opportunity to share what we do here with Minister Dan Williams and his staff a couple of weeks ago—we managed to stop an epidemic that I compare to the one you are living through in North America related to fentanyl. It cuts across all layers of society and affects all families. I believe that it's almost impossible to find a Canadian or American family that has not been affected by this epidemic.

I think the way to completely change how we address those problems is to consider drug-related disease, or drug use disorder, as a disease with the same dignity as other diseases, and think of the people who suffer from it as having the same dignity as patients who suffer from other kinds of diseases. I think it's key to consider and to approach those problems from the health and social side, rather than prosecution or any kind of coercion of people who have these kinds of problems.

I'm very happy to address this, and I'm completely at your disposal to reply to questions you may have about the Portuguese way to address these problems. Thank you for having me here.