Semafor Signals
Brazil’s top court votes to decriminalize marijuana possession in move that could reduce prison numbers
Insights from The Brazilian Report, Americas Quarterly, The Washington Post, and Associated Press
The News
Brazil’s Supreme Court voted to decriminalize possession of marijuana for personal use, marking a victory for activists who have long argued the incarceration of users caught with small amounts of the drug disproportionately affects poor and Black people.
Brazil has the world’s third-highest prison population, according to the World Prison Brief, and the court’s move on Tuesday makes it one of the last Latin American countries to decriminalize marijuana for personal use.
The decision comes as Congress advances its own proposal to tighten drug legislation: An amendment to make possessing any amount of drugs a constitutional offense will soon to be debated in the lower house. Any legislation would take precedence over the court’s ruling, but could still be challenged on constitutional grounds.
SIGNALS
Brazil’s spiralling prison population may be linked to racial discrimination
Black Brazilians make up almost two-thirds of the country’s overcrowded prison population, despite comprising just 10% of the national population, Bloomberg reported. Nearly a quarter of all those in prison are there for drug-related offenses, according to the International Drug Policy Consortium: And if defendants on trial live in impoverished or mostly Black neighborhoods, that fact alone is often counted as evidence against them, even when the volume of drugs seized is minimal, a Brazilian journalist argued in The Washington Post in 2021.
Current drug law creates a ‘normative vacuum’
Brazilian drug law already states that jail sentences should be reserved for dealers — but it fails to distinguish possession for personal use from possession with intent to sell, creating a “normative vacuum” that has allowed decisions to be made across racial and class lines, a columnist argued in The Brazilian Report. Even when the Supreme Court establishes a maximum quantity of marijuana for personal use, that amount may remain only one determinant of whether a person is considered a dealer or a user, a legal expert told the Associated Press. Congress’ proposed amendment risks worsening the problem by differentiating users from dealers based on “factual circumstances… a vague provision that would be open to abuse,” Human Rights Watch has warned.
Lawmakers caught between ‘two opposite but similarly unrealistic’ options
Several Latin American countries appear to be backing off from the so-called ‘war on drugs,’ but the public debate is deadlocked between “two opposite, but similarly unrealistic” alternatives — legalization or a Bukele-style gang crackdown, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly argued. The majority of Brazilians and Chileans disapprove of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs, but public opinion across Latin America is also unlikely to support putting 2% of the adult population in jail as El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has — and what’s clear is that this is a problem “that continues to defy simple solutions,” he added.
