[thucydides]

n=1: during my visit to lisbon in 2021, i was accosted twice by burly guys near my hotel[1] who aggressively asked if i wanted to buy weed or cocaine. the first time, the guy was so angry at my refusal ("no thanks, man") that he followed me up a public staircase to continue his pitch. he backed off when i returned his verbal aggression.

so maybe the portuguese policy could use some tweaking.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/y3N88pENiH8rVXTM6

[jdmoreira]

These guys are not even selling you drugs. They are selling you some fake thing. They just swindle tourists. They are hustlers not even real drug dealers.

I'm Portuguese and lived in Lisbon for 12 years. Trust me, you can't buy drugs from those guys

[stinos]

Trust me, you can't buy drugs from those guys

What I don't get about this: most people seem to know (think?) this. So you'd think these guys have no income at all because no-one is trusting them so no-one buys from them. Yet after decades they're still there, in a lot of cities. So there must be something which works in this system. I find it hard to believe they survive off the occasional sell to a tourist. I mean, could be, but seems far fatched to me?

[jdmoreira]

It's not occasional. They sell a lot. There is a lot of gullible people in this world and an endless supply of fresh tourists or kids from other towns landing in Lisbon everyday. They only need to scam 1 person a day to make 50€. That's more than most Portuguese earn per day.

They scammed me when I was a kid (I wanted weed).

Don't you think I know what I'm talking about? You can buy drugs is Lisbon of course but real drug dealers aren't approaching thousands of people in the open streets of downtown Lisbon everyday!

Police leaves these guys alone because there is no real crime. Scamming tourists is hard to persecute. Not worth it!

[galfarragem]

> They sell a lot.

They sell a lot because they will force people to buy whenever possible. Most people buy it to be left alone.

> Police leaves these guys alone because there is no real crime. Scamming tourists is hard to persecute. Not worth it!

Often there is crime: forcing people to buy it's petty crime but most will not complain unless there is violence. It's nearly impossible to jail them with the actual political zeitgeist, making it a waste of time and money. This impunity leaves room for retaliation also.

[polshaw]

I wish they would find a way to deal with it, the constant harassment is one of the worst things about Lisbon.

[npteljes]

Maybe that's why they harass tourists. Tourists are exploited in a myriad of cheap ways everywhere. This long article is just the common ones seen all around the world:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Common_scams

[mahathu]

It might also be that they don't have a better alternative. For example, in Germany, refugees who don't have a work permit stand around in parks selling laced weed to tourists all day

[emporas]

Yep, he tried to sell you something illegal. No one said that the outlaws are the best people out there. Maybe if you were an easier target, he would convince you to give him money anyway, without buying anything.

Total prohibition, prohibition of possession & prohibition of production vs decriminalization of possession & prohibition of production, means that the end product is expensive, difficult to obtain and dangerous to sell. In both cases the outlaws are normally the people selling it.

In case it was legal to produce it, poppy fields in Afghanistan would face serious competition from Portugal, and their profits should dwindle. I mean, American army weapons have be funded somehow.

[darkclouds]

I think you'll find drugs are sold everywhere. When in Cambridge, England, I often get people say "Hey bud" to me when walking towards and past me, which is a deniable euphemism for touting weed, if I was an undercover cop.

Drugs are everywhere and who sells them is quite surprising. The war on drugs will never be won whilst life is not brilliant and life is getting worse for many, and they wont hesitate to "drop" you ie kill you if they know you have reported them to the police, at least, thats what they say in roundabout ways.

If royalty and other rich people who own country estates, think they have a right to rule, these drug dealers people will claim they have a right to do what they do. They just challenge the hypocrisy in the system.

[djaychela]

I recently went to Porto for a weekend. I've never been offered drugs as many times as I have there... but no-one was pushy, it was literally that you walked past them, they said "coke, hash" or similar, and that was that. They were maybe more overt during the night (and where the bars were), but never anything more than that, and not a problem for me - I've had more pushy encounters in London in the mid 90s.

[projektfu]

N=1, in 1997, when drugs were pretty heavily enforced in NYC, there were mildly scary people at the exit to Penn Station, saying "Want some smoke? Want some blow?"

Now those guys are gone, but there are basically food trucks selling pot gummies with licenses.

There were homeless sleeping on heating vents both times.

[ohashi]

That's the heart of touristy downtown. Lot of guys selling fairly aggressively there towards tourists. Been offered quite a lot, I didn't have the aggression experience you seemed to experience though. That is unfortunate.

[slowmotiony]

Weird. We have tourist spots in eastern europe and I've never once been offered drugs in my entire life.

[stkdump]

I experienced something similar at a famous parisian landmark with a person trying to sell souveniers. When I declined he got strangely aggressive and I felt like quickly getting away even though the place was packed with tourists. In Istanbul there was a man selling flowers getting a bit agressive when I declined. So like said elsewhere in this thread, this phenomenon is not drug specific.

[jakear]

> So angry that .. he followed me ... to continue his pitch.

That doesn't seem very angry? Kinda exactly what I'd expect from a street salesperson. Your best bet is to ignore them entirely, the second you interact you're a fish on a hook, and it's their job to reel you in.

Angry is the Colombians who will suffocate you at knifepoint for not giving them cocaine.

[thucydides]

for whatever reason, he replied "fuck you too" and followed me up the stairs. what do you think was his emotional state?

[martinald]

I don't really understand why the police allow this. It's really annoying all over the tourist areas of Lisbon. Obviously they are fake drugs; but surely that would be a crime of fraud in itself if they can't get them on the actual drug charges?

[kagakuninja]

Sounds like a trip to the Tenderloin in SF. Dealers are everywhere.

[thucydides]

Never forget: this only happens because people tolerate it. If people didn’t want it to happen, it would stop.