RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil's Supreme Court voted Tuesday to criminalize the possession of marijuana for personal use, making the country the last country in Latin America to do so, a move Its large prison population could be reduced.
With the final votes cast Tuesday, the majority of the 11-member court's justices have voted in favor of a criminal conviction since deliberations began in 2015.
Judges must still determine the maximum amount of marijuana that can be characterized as personal use and when the order will take effect. It is expected to be over by Wednesday.
All of the justices who voted in favor said that criminal penalties should be limited to possession of marijuana in an amount suitable for personal use. Drug sales will remain illegal.
In 2006, Brazil's Congress approved a law that sought to punish those caught with small amounts of drugs, including marijuana, with alternative penalties such as community service. Experts say the law was too vague and didn't establish specific quantities to help law enforcement and judges distinguish personal use from drug trafficking.
Police continued to arrest people carrying small amounts of drugs for trafficking, and Brazil's prison population continued to grow.
“The majority of pre-trial detainees and drug-trafficking convictions in Brazil are first-time offenders, carrying small amounts of illegal substances, caught in routine police operations, unarmed. And without evidence of any connection to organized crime, said Ilona Szabó, president of the Igarapé Institute, a think tank focused on public safety.
Congress has responded to ongoing Supreme Court debates by separately advancing a proposal to tighten drug laws, which would complicate the legal picture surrounding marijuana possession.
In April, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment criminalizing possession of any amount of the illegal substance. The House Constitution Committee approved the proposal on June 12, and it must pass through at least one other committee before going to a floor vote.
If lawmakers pass such a measure, the legislation would take precedence over a Supreme Court decision but could still be challenged on constitutional grounds.
Speaking to reporters in the capital Brasilia, Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco said it was not the Supreme Court's place to rule on the matter.
He said that there is an appropriate way to take this debate forward and that is the legislative process. “It's something that, obviously, is going to generate a lot of debate and it's going to be a preoccupation for Congress.”
Last year, a Brazilian court allowed some patients to grow cannabis for medical treatment, while in 2019 the health regulator approved guidelines for the sale of cannabis-derived medicines. But Brazil is one of the few countries in Latin America that has not criminalized possession of small amounts of the drug for personal use.
The Supreme Court decision has long been sought by activists and legal experts in a country where the prison population has become the third largest in the world. Critics of the current legislation say that users caught with small amounts of drugs are routinely convicted of trafficking and locked up in overcrowded prisons, where they are forced to join prison gangs. is forced to.
“Today, trafficking is the leading cause of incarceration in Brazil,” said Cristiano Marona, director of JUSTA, a civil society group that focuses on the justice system.
According to a database that tracks such statistics, Brazil ranks behind the United States and China as the country with the highest prison population.
As of December 2023, approximately 852,000 people were deprived of their liberty in Brazil, according to official figures. About 25 percent of them were arrested for drug possession or trafficking. Brazil's prisons are overcrowded, and black citizens are disproportionately represented, making up more than two-thirds of the prison population.
A recent study by Insper, a research and education institute in Brazil, found that black people found with drugs by the police were slightly more likely to be charged as traffickers than white people. Is. The authors analyzed more than 3.5 million records from the Public Security Secretariat of São Paulo from 2010 to 2020.
Progress in drug policy in Brazil! This is a public health issue, not security and imprisonment,” left-wing lawmaker Chico Alencar wrote on X after the verdict.
In contrast, Gustavo Scandelari, an expert on Brazil's penal code at the law firm Doti Advocados, said he did not foresee the decision making a significant change from the status quo, even with the Supreme Court's more personal use of marijuana. Even after establishing a quantity greater than . Scandelari argued that the amount would be a determinant of whether authorities consider a person a dealer or a consumer, but not the only one.
Some Brazilians, like 47-year-old Rio de Janeiro resident Alexandro Trindad, have managed to resent the Supreme Court's decriminalization of marijuana and Congress' push to keep it illegal.
The Supreme Court is not the right place (for such a decision). It should be put to the polls for the people to decide,” Trindad said. “Both the Supreme Court and Congress have been very hostile to society on this issue.”
Like other countries in the region, such as Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, Brazil allows the medicinal use of cannabis, albeit in a very limited manner.
Uruguay has fully legalized the use of marijuana, and recreational use is legal for adults in some US states. In Colombia, possession has been criminalized for a decade, but a law to regulate the recreational use of marijuana so it can be sold legally failed to pass the Senate in August. Colombians can carry small amounts of marijuana, but it is not legal to sell it for recreational purposes.
The same is true of 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 did not harm others. But the law has not changed and users are still arrested, although most cases are thrown out by judges.
Uruguay became the first country to legalize marijuana for recreational use in 2013, although it was only implemented in 2017. The entire industry in Uruguay, from production to distribution, is controlled by the state and registered users can purchase up to 40 grams of marijuana per month through pharmacies.
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Sá Pessoa reported from São Paulo. Associated Press reporters Mauricio Soares, Mario Lobo, Regina Garcia Cano and Manuel Rueda contributed to this report.