Brazil’s Splendid Court decriminalizes marijuana ownership for personal use

Brazil’s Supreme Court voted on Tuesday to decriminalize the ownership of marijuana for personal use, giving families the right to do so in a move that will reduce major prison overcrowding.

With the final votes cast on Tuesday, the majority of judges on the 11-member court have voted in favor of decriminalization since deliberations began in 2015.

Judges will still have to decide the maximum amount of marijuana that can be considered of personal importance and when that decision will take effect. It is expected to be completed by Wednesday.

All of the judges with bias stated that decriminalization should be limited to possession of marijuana in amounts reasonable for personal use. It will be illegal to promote the medicine.

In 2006, Brazil’s Congress approved a law requiring people carrying small amounts of equipment, including marijuana, to be punished with additional consequences such as mob traffickers. Professionals say the law was too vague and did not set a specific reserve for assisting law enforcement and that judges distinguished non-public importance from drug trafficking.

Police continued to arrest people wearing the devices on smuggling charges, and Brazil’s prison overcrowding continued to grow.

“The majority of pre-trial detainees and drug trafficking convicts in Brazil are first-time offenders, who carried small amounts of illegal substances with them, were caught in routine police operations, were unarmed and had no ties to organized crime. There was no evidence.” “said Ilona Szabo, president of the Igarapé Institute, a think tank that specializes in social protection.

Congress has responded to the Supreme Court’s ongoing deliberations by pushing a proposal to tighten drug laws one by one, which could complicate marijuana ownership by criminalizing the issue.

In April, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment criminalizing ownership of any cache of illegal substances. The lower region’s constitutional committee approved the proposal on June 12, and it will go through at least one alternative committee before taking a floor vote.

If lawmakers adopt one of these measures, the law will take precedence over the Supreme Court’s decision, but it can still be challenged on constitutional grounds.

Speaking to reporters in the capital Brasilia, Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco said it was not the Splendid Court’s jurisdiction to decide on the subject.

“There is a reasonable way to move this discussion forward and that is the legislative process,” he said. “This is something that obviously causes widespread discussion and is a matter of concern to Congress.”

Last year, a Brazilian court allowed cannabis to be grown for medical treatment for some patients, with the state regulator in 2019 issuing guidelines for the sale of medicinal products derived from cannabis. However Brazil is one of the few international locations in Latin America that has not decriminalized the ownership of small amounts of devices for personal consumption.

The Splendid Court decision has long been sought by activists and criminological scholars in a country where prison overcrowding has become the world’s third largest. Critics of Wave laws say customers caught with small amounts of devices are often convicted of trafficking charges and locked up in overcrowded prisons, where they are pressured to join prison gangs. Is.

“Today, trafficking is the main driver of imprisonment in Brazil,” said Cristiano Marona, director of JUSTA, a civil family team specializing in the justice system.

According to the International Prison Temporary, a database that tracks such data, Brazil is second only to the US and China among the international locations with the best prison populations.

According to authentic data, about 852,000 people in Brazil were deprived of self-governance as of December 2023. Of those, about 25% were arrested for owning or trafficking in gear. Brazil’s prisons are extremely overcrowded, and voters are disproportionately represented, making up more than two-thirds of the prison population.

A latest study from Insper, a Brazilian research and education institute, showed that suspects caught with drugs by police were more likely to be convicted as traffickers than white people. The authors analyzed more than 3.5 million pieces of data from the Secretariat of Social Security of São Paulo from 2010 to 2020.

“Progress in drug policy in Brazil! This is an issue of public health, not security and imprisonment,” left-wing lawmaker Chico Alencar wrote in announcing the decision on Axe.

In contrast, Gustavo Scandelari, an expert on the Brazilian Penal Code at the law firm Doti Advogados, said he does not expect the decision to lead to any significant changes to the status quo, even with the Supreme Court taking the maximum accumulation of marijuana to individual Will establish. Importance. Scandelari argued that quantity would remain a determinant of whether the government considers an individual a broker or a client, but not the only one.

Some Brazilians, like 47-year-old Rio de Janeiro resident Alexandro Trindade, have been frustrated by the Splendid Court’s decision to decriminalize marijuana and Congress’ push to declare it illegal.

“The Supreme Court is not the right place (for such a decision). It should be put to referendum for the people to decide,” Trindade said. “Both the Supreme Court and the Congress have been very anti-social in this.”

Like other international locations such as Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, the medicinal value of cannabis has been approved in Brazil, although in an extremely limited manner.

Uruguay has fully legalized marijuana possession, and some US states have criminalized marijuana possession for adults. In Colombia, ownership has been decriminalized for a decade, but a law to monitor the recreational value of marijuana so it can be legalized did not pass the Senate in August. Colombians can grow small amounts of marijuana, although selling it for recreational purposes is not criminal.

Same is the case for Ecuador and Peru. Both distribution and possession are illegal in Venezuela.

Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that it was unconstitutional to punish an adult for consuming marijuana if it does not cause harm to others. However no changes have been made to the law and consumers are still arrested, even though most cases are dismissed by judges.

Uruguay was the first country to legalize marijuana for holiday significance in 2013, although it was only implemented in 2017. Uruguay’s entire industry, from manufacturing to distribution, is under control and registered customers can purchase more than 40 grams of marijuana through pharmacies.