RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s Supreme Courtroom on Tuesday voted to decriminalize possession of marijuana for private use, making the nation certainly one of Latin America’s final to take action, in a transfer that might cut back its large jail inhabitants.
With last votes forged on Tuesday, a majority of the justices on the 11-person court docket have voted in favor of decriminalization since deliberations started in 2015.
The justices should nonetheless decide the utmost amount of marijuana that might be characterised as being for private use and when the ruling will enter into impact. That’s anticipated to complete as early as Wednesday.
All of the justices who’ve voted in favor mentioned decriminalization ought to be restricted to possession of marijuana in quantities appropriate for private use. Promoting medication will stay unlawful.
In 2006, Brazil’s Congress accepted a legislation that sought to punish people caught carrying small quantities of medicine, together with marijuana, with different penalties resembling neighborhood service. Specialists say the legislation was too obscure and didn’t set up a particular amount to assist legislation enforcement and judges differentiate private use from drug trafficking.
Police continued to arrest individuals carrying small portions of medicine on trafficking expenses and Brazil’s jail inhabitants continued to swell.
“The vast majority of pre-trial detainees and people convicted of drug trafficking in Brazil are first-time offenders, who carried small quantities of illicit substance with them, caught in routine police operations, unarmed and with no proof of any relationship with organized crime,” mentioned Ilona Szabó, president of Igarapé Institute, a assume tank specializing in public safety.
Congress has responded to the highest court docket’s ongoing deliberations by individually advancing a proposal to tighten drug laws, which might complicate the authorized image surrounding marijuana possession.
In April, the Senate accepted a constitutional modification criminalizing possession of any amount of illicit substance. The decrease home’s constitutional committee accepted the proposal on June 12, and it might want to cross by no less than one different committee earlier than going to a flooring vote.
If lawmakers cross such a measure, the laws would take priority excessive court docket’s ruling however nonetheless might be challenged on constitutional grounds.
Chatting with reporters in capital Brasilia, the Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, mentioned it isn’t the Supreme Courtroom’s place to subject a call on the matter.
“There may be an acceptable path for this dialogue to maneuver ahead and that’s the legislative course of,” he mentioned. “It’s one thing that, clearly, arouses broad dialogue and it’s a topic of preoccupation for Congress.”
Final yr, a Brazilian court docket licensed some sufferers to develop hashish for medical remedy after the well being regulator in 2019 accepted tips for the sale of medicinal merchandise derived from hashish. However Brazil is one of some international locations in Latin America that hasn’t decriminalized the possession of small portions of medicine for private consumption.
The Supreme Courtroom’s ruling has lengthy been sought by activists and authorized students in a rustic the place the jail inhabitants has turn into the third largest on this planet. Critics of present laws say customers caught with even small quantities of medicine are usually convicted on trafficking expenses and locked up in overcrowded jails, the place they’re compelled to hitch jail gangs.
“At present, trafficking is the principle vector for imprisonment in Brazil,” mentioned Cristiano Maronna, director of JUSTA, a civil society group specializing in the justice system.
Brazil ranks behind U.S. and China in international locations with the best jail populations, in response to the World Jail Temporary, a database monitoring such figures.
Some 852,000 people had been disadvantaged of liberty in Brazil as of December 2023, in response to official information. Of these, almost 25% had been arrested for possession of medicine or trafficking. Brazilian jails are overcrowded, and Black residents are disproportionately represented, accounting for greater than two-thirds of the jail inhabitants.
A latest research by Insper, a Brazilian analysis and training institute, decided that Black people discovered by police with medication had been barely extra more likely to be indicted as traffickers than white individuals. The authors analyzed over 3.5 million information from Sao Paulo’s public safety secretariat from 2010 to 2020.
“An advance in drug coverage in Brazil! This is a matter of public well being, not safety and incarceration,” leftist lawmaker Chico Alencar wrote on X after the ruling.
Against this, Gustavo Scandelari, a specialist on Brazil’s penal code at legislation agency Dotti Advogados, mentioned he doesn’t foresee the ruling bringing a few important shift from the established order, even after the highest court docket establishes a most amount of marijuana for private use. Scandelari argued that the quantity will stay one determinant of whether or not authorities take into account an individual a seller or a person, however not the one one.
Some Brazilians, like 47-year-old Rio de Janeiro resident Alexandro Trindade, have managed to be upset with each the Supreme Courtroom decriminalizing marijuana and Congress pushing to maintain it unlawful.
“The Supreme Courtroom is just not the appropriate place (for such choice). This ought to be submitted to a plebiscite for the individuals to resolve,” Trindade mentioned. “Each the Supreme Courtroom and Congress have been very against society on this.”
As in different international locations within the area, like Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, medicinal use of hashish in Brazil is allowed, although in a extremely restricted method.
Uruguay has absolutely legalized the usage of marijuana, and in some U.S. states leisure use for adults is authorized. In Colombia, possession has been decriminalized for a decade, however a legislation to manage the leisure use of marijuana in order that it may be offered legally did not cross within the Senate in August. Colombians can carry small quantities of marijuana, however promoting it for leisure functions is just not authorized.
The identical goes for Ecuador and Peru. Each distribution and possession stay unlawful in Venezuela.
Argentina’s Supreme Courtroom dominated in 2009 it was unconstitutional to penalize an grownup for consuming marijuana if it didn’t hurt others. However the legislation has not been modified and customers are nonetheless arrested, though most instances are thrown out by judges.
Uruguay grew to become the primary nation to legalize marijuana for leisure use in 2013 though it was solely carried out in 2017. Uruguay’s entire business, from manufacturing to distribution, is below state management and registered customers should buy as much as 40 grams of marijuana monthly by pharmacies.
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Sá Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo. Related Press journalists Mauricio Savarese, Mário Lobão, Regina Garcia Cano and Manuel Rueda contributed to this report.
