Recreational & Hard Drugs in Greece

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?

The corrupt Police in Exarhia and other Athens neighborhoods, particularly Kypseli, allow heroine dealers to sell drugs for a percentage of the profits. Everyone knows it, no one does anything about it. In Kypseli its Africans, (Nigerians mostly) Albanians and Greeks who sell the drugs.

Come on Greece wake up! These are your children you are turning into junkies.

My favorite story about this situation took place in 2002 when the addicted son of a Thessaloniki university professor, who was in the OKEANA Rehabilitation Program, drove up to the Exarhia police station in Athens, 3 blocks from where I am sitting now, double parked his car out side the booth where the cop on guard was sitting and after opening the trunk, pointed a hunting shotgun in his face.

He told him "Give me your machine gun or I'll blow your head off!

The cop gave him the gun and then this kid started to calmly shoot up the police HQ, not injuring anyone. He then got back in his car and drove a few blocks over to Kolonaki and the house of Greece's Prime Minister Mr. Simitis and started to shoot that up too.

Now, Mr. Simitis, who was a bean counter before he fell into the job of PASOK PM has body guards and even though he wasn't home, these body guards, who are all fired now, didn't do a damn thing and hid under beds or wherever they could.

The 'Alleged Perpetrator' (my hero by now) then got into his car and drove away. He never shot at anyone.

He was finally pulled to earth by an Arabic visitor to Greece in a neighborhood far away as he was staggering around with a machine gun in his hands. Most self respecting Arabs are not intimidated by machine guns because they already own several of them themselves.

This was all over CNN too and I think the comment was, "how are the Greeks going to supply security for the Olympics when they have stuff like this going on"? Good question!

So when I told you up at the top of the page that they lightened up on the draconian rehabilitation program it was because of this kid who had the courage enough or was desperate enough or both to make his point. Now there are commandos out side the police stations with walkie talkies and what all. The cow has left the barn guys! You can't drive down Mr. Simitis street anymore either.

This exemplifies the frustration many feel with the corrupt politicians and police in Greece and in lots of other countries too for that matter. I love those fancy suits and expensive cars they wear and drive though. Greece, with its Socialist Government, is pretty low on my list of highly ethical and moral countries.

All, or at least a large percentage of the students, cheat in school too. I cant honestly say I never cheated in school but not the way these kids do. Maybe it became ingrained due to 400 years of trying to outwit the Turks during the occupation but didn't that end almost 200 years ago? Hello?

Lying is so bad in Greece that the government taxes you not on what you declare but on what they can prove you own or the square meters you rent to live in or conduct business from and the kind of car you drive. Its the Napoleonic Code too; where you are guilty until proven innocent! This is called Andikimenika Kritieria. The "Specific Criteria" of tax appraisal.

Drugs suspect shot dead in car (Kathimerini Newspaper)

A suspected drug dealer was shot dead and his companion injured in a shootout between police and heroin traffickers in northern Greece early yesterday.

The gunfight broke out during a sting operation in which an undercover Thessaloniki drug squad officer had arranged to buy half a kilo of heroin from gangsters in the Vale of Tempe, where five drug dealers turned up in two cars. Police sprang the trap as the transaction was taking place, but the suspects managed to drive away. Some time later and several kilometers away, Larissa traffic police spotted a car that had gone off the road. The 27-year-old driver had died of gunshot wounds, while his 20-year-old female passenger was injured. Their names were not made public. Meanwhile, Athens businessmen Constantinos Sahas, 50 — who owns luxury restaurants in Myconos and in Athens’s upmarket Kolonaki area — Theodoros Kostiroglou, 60, Harilaos Harakas, 51, and Athanassios Koutoudis, 54, were charged on Saturday with trafficking in cocaine.

Drug deaths down for first time in 2002

The number of drug deaths declined last year for the first time, to 259 from 321 in 2001, according to a report released yesterday by the National Center for Documentation and Information on Drugs and Addiction (EKTEPN).

The reduction was partly attributed to the increased number of places available in rehabilitation programs and the fact that fewer were being turned away from these centers for continuing to use drugs.

However, the age at which young people first experiment with drugs has gone down to 12. According to a survey of high school pupils, one in three say they have tried more than one substance.

About 18,500 people use heroin. About 18 percent have had contact with rehabilitation programs and last year 2,157 addicts joined one of these programs. Most are men aged 19-40, unemployed and with a high school education.

Harry's note: The Greek TV shows this really stupid PSA telling kids how dangerous marijuana is and how it will turn you into a vegetable but absolutely nothing about the dangers of heroin or other harder dugs.

Is it because the police and corrupt politicians are making money off heroin (by selling it and from EU grants to combat it thus creating another burocracy of rehabilitation clinicians, there are 13 clinics in Exarhia alone) or are they just stupid and out of touch with the rest of the whole civilized world?