Recreational & Hard Drugs in Greece Page 1

I know none of you out there do recreational drugs or at least never inhale them. Greece has decriminalized possession of small amounts of hashish ('mavro') and cannabis ('foonda'). Supposedly, now, for small personal amounts, you will only be fined. The written letter of the law still allows them to incarcerate and squeeze money out of you so try not to get into trouble. Its much more relaxed than it used to be under the colonels however. Midnight express? That was Turkey.

XTC is prevalent from your local DJ. You'll see people rolling joints here and there in Athens too but its not Amsterdam. So caution is a good idea.

There are other harder drugs around and the waiting list for the heroin rehabilitation program in Athens is over 3000.This is perhaps the most backward, shameful and short sighted area of Greece's official policy towards drug users. Recently they have relaxed the draconian measures used to treat heroine addicts a little bit. Heroine addiction is so bad that almost everyone has a family member or knows someone with an addicted  family member. I've got one too!

I want to thank Mr. Papandraou, Greece's foreign minister, who is also an American citizen and married to an American citizen and whose kids went to American schools, for getting the program started in the 1st place... Bravo! It was past time! Much more remains to be done! Heroin users are considered ill, cannabis smokers are considered criminals. At the same time I want to condemn his administration which after all allowed this drug addiction problem to get so out of hand in the first place AND the current administration for not doing more to stop the heroin traffic. OK maybe not the international transit traffic but the local traffic in Athens. Are you trying to tell me minister the the vaunted European and American trained Greek police with all the Olympic Games security equipment (all those hundreds of cameras) cant catch a few local pushers?

More Drug use in Greece page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4