João Augusto Castel-Branco Goulão ComIH (born 6 May 1954 in

Cernache do Bonjardim Cernache do Bonjardim is a former Freguesia (Portugal), civil parish in the municipality of Sertã Municipality, Sertã, central Portugal. In 2013, the parish merged into the new parish Cernache do Bonjardim, Nesperal e Palhais. The population in 20 ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

) is a Portuguese physician and the current national drug coordinator for Portugal. He is credited as being an architect of Portugal's drug policy established in 2000. From 2009 to 2015, he served as chairman of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and has been a delegate at the

United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is one of the functional commissions of the United Nations' Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and is the central drug policy-making body within the United Nations System. The CND also has important man ...

Medical career

Goulão attended the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, th ...

from 1971 to 1978, graduating from the university's Faculty of Medicine. After an internship and residency, he became a general practitioner in 1983. Beginning in 1987, he started specialising in treatment of drug addicts. From 1988 to 1992, he worked at the Taipas Centre in Lisbon, established in 1987 by the Portuguese Ministry of Health "for the treatment, recovery and social reintegration of drug addicts." In 1997, he became the national director of the network of drug treatment centres in Portugal. In 1998, Goulão was a member of the 11-person committee that formed the report on which Portugal's current drug policy of

decriminalisation Decriminalization or decriminalisation is the reclassification in law relating to certain acts or aspects of such to the effect that they are no longer considered a crime, including the removal of criminal penalties in relation to them. This refor ...

was based. "

he committee He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

indicated directions in which to move with respect to policies of prevention, treatment, harm reduction and social reinsertion. One of our premises is that drug abusers are ill, not criminals, and that they need help," he said.

Appointments

From 1997 to 2002, Goulão served on the scientific committee for the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), an agency of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

. Since 2005, he has been Portugal's representative at the agency. He served two terms as chairman of the board for EMCDDA (2009–2011 and 2012–2015). Since 2005, Goulão has been head of the General-Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (''Serviço de Intervenção nos Comportamentos Adictícios e nas Dependências'') (SICAD), within Portugal's Ministry of Health. He is also chairman of Portugal's Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction (''Instituto da Droga e da Toxicodependência'') (IDT).

Award and Honours

PRT Order of Prince Henry - Commander BAR

Commander of the Order of Prince Henry by Portuguese President

Jorge Sampaio Jorge Fernando Branco de Sampaio (; 18 September 1939 – 10 September 2021) was a Portuguese lawyer and politician who was the 18th president of Portugal from 1996 to 2006. A member of the Socialist Party, a party which he led between 1989 a ...

, 2006 * Municipality of Faro, Silver Medal for Merit, 2011 *

Drug Policy Alliance The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) is a New York City–based nonprofit organization that seeks to advance policies that “reduce the harms of both drug use and drug prohibition, and to promote the sovereignty of individuals over their minds and b ...

, Norman E. Zinberg Award for Achievement in the Field of Medicine, 2013

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Goulao, Joao Castel-Branco People from Lisbon People from Sertã Living people 1954 births Portuguese civil servants Portuguese general practitioners 20th-century Portuguese physicians 21st-century Portuguese physicians Commanders of the Order of Prince Henry Drug policy reform activists University of Lisbon alumni