Brazil decriminalized marijuana for personal use on Wednesday, making the nation of 203 million the largest country to take such a step, the latest sign of growing global acceptance of the drug.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled that Brazilians can possess up to 40 grams of cannabis (about 80 marijuana sticks) without punishment, a decision that takes effect in a few days and will remain in effect for 18 months.
The court has asked Brazil’s parliament and health authorities to set a permanent amount of marijuana that citizens can possess. Selling marijuana is still a crime.
Thousands of Brazilians are facing prison sentences for possessing marijuana below the new legal limit, legal analysts said. It is unclear what impact the decision will have on convictions.
Black men, many of whom account for 61% of drug trafficking prosecutions, make up 27% of the population. Studies have shown that thousands of black Brazilians have been convicted in situations where there were few or no prosecutions against white people.
Brazil has long taken a harshly criminal approach to drugs, so the country’s decision to effectively allow its citizens to smoke marijuana is part of a remarkable shift in public opinion and public policy on drugs over the past two decades. More than 20 countries have now decriminalized or legalized recreational marijuana use, mostly in Europe and the United States.
Mexico legalized marijuana in 2021. Luxembourg did so last year. And Germany in April.
Canada and Uruguay have allowed the licensed sale of marijuana for years. Many more countries have decriminalized marijuana, meaning they have eliminated criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of the drug, but it is still technically illegal and authorities still target smugglers.
In many cases, these changes were part of a broader policy shift to treat drug use as a health problem rather than a criminal act.
In the United States, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, but states can now set their own policies. Since voters in Colorado and Washington first approved recreational use of marijuana in 2012, more than half of Americans now live in a state where marijuana is legal.
According to Gallup, 70% of Americans now believe marijuana should be legal, up from 31% in 2000.
Brazil has had the opposite experience. Brazil currently has a more lenient federal marijuana policy than the United States, but far fewer Brazilians favor marijuana than Americans.
Less than a third of Brazilians support decriminalizing marijuana, according to a survey of 2,000 people conducted in March by Brazilian pollster Datapolya.
According to Angela Mee, research director at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the liberalization of drug policies has led to a shift in attitudes in many parts of the world.
“Awareness of the risks of cannabis has decreased, which can be seen in our data on the proportion of young people who believe cannabis is harmful.” she said “There has been a huge decline in both North America and Europe.”
Brazil’s Supreme Court decriminalized marijuana in 2009 after nearly a decade of deliberations in a court case. The case centered on a 55-year-old man who was caught with three grams of marijuana while in prison on separate charges in Sao Paulo. He was sentenced to two months of community service, but his lawyers appealed, arguing that punishing drug users violated Brazil’s constitution.
Since 2015, the Supreme Court has delayed ruling on the case as the justices disagree on how to distinguish between users and traffickers, which drugs should be decriminalized and who should set drug policy. The Supreme Court reached a majority decision on Tuesday and confirmed the decision on Wednesday.
Chief Justice Luís Roberto Barroso said the ruling did not condone marijuana use, but rather acknowledged failed drug policies that have led to mass incarceration of poor youth and many becoming involved in organized crime.
“At no point are we saying that drug use is legal or a positive thing,” he said. “The strategy we’ve adopted is not working.”
In 2006, Brazil’s Congress passed a law aimed at increasing penalties for drug traffickers and reducing penalties for users.
The law called for softer penalties for drug users, such as community service. But the law was vague about what constitutes a trafficker, and critics say police and prosecutors used it to put more drug users in jail.
Ten years after the law was passed, the percentage of prisoners detained on drug charges increased from 9% to 28%, according to Human Rights Watch.
Studies have shown that black men are disproportionately affected. A study of drug incidents from 2010 to 2020 in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, found that police officers in Brazil It found that 31,000 black people were classified as human traffickers. .
“Skin color matters in how drug laws are applied,” said Cristiano Maronna, director of Justa, a research group that examines Brazil’s justice system. He said the darker your skin, the more likely you are to be charged with “human trafficking, even for small amounts.”
In its decision, the Supreme Court sought to clarify the line between possession and illegal trafficking. The court said people in possession of other items, such as scales, commonly used to sell drugs could still be charged with unlawful trafficking.
Maronna said that despite the new policies, Brazil still has some of the harshest drug laws in Latin America, which has led to the country’s prisons filling up. Brazil has the third-largest prison population in the world, after the United States and China.
Even before the new marijuana policy was finalized, there were already efforts to nullify Brazil’s right to do so. Conservatives in Brazil’s Congress are pushing a bill that would amend the constitution to criminalize marijuana possession.
Congressional leaders said the issue should be left to Congress and that most lawmakers oppose decriminalization.
