The scale of a drug seizure does not correlate to how successfully the government is fighting the drug war. According to the 18th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, Federal Police cocaine seizures rose from 41.7 tons in 2013 to 72.5 tons in 2023. Across seizures recorded by federal, state and municipal police forces, we also see the same overall trend of quantities getting larger over the years.

The volume of cocaine seized does not matter. It remains a banned substance and so the market remains in the hands of drug-trafficking groups. Lucrative demand is unaffected. If this does turn out to be a record cocaine seizure, what will happen next? Another, larger seizure. More drugs. More records.

The cocaine market is booming. That’s what the gigantic size of these shipments tells us, not how law enforcement has dealt drug traffickers a devastating blow. In 2023, the global cocaine market grew faster than that of any other drug. The market is more geographically adaptive than ever.

Larger seizures can be a sign of stronger enforcement, yes. But it makes more sense that they’re a sign of a growing and resilient supply pipeline. It’s not as if shipments have always been this size, and the government didn’t crack down on them until now. If the record keeps being broken because the market keeps getting bigger, then these seizures are documenting that expansion, not stopping it. 

Seized shipment of cocaine in Honduras, 2014

I am not suggesting that seizures have zero effect. They can create frictions, delays, losses and rerouting costs. But the available evidence gives little support to the fantasy that busts and arrests meaningfully curb the global drug trade. 

“No matter how impressive the seizures look, it makes absolutely no difference to the drug supply,” as former undercover police officer Neil Woods, now of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP),  said in 2021. “Not only do we never decrease the drug supply, these busts actively increase violence.”  

A 2025 RAND Europe systematic review commissioned by the UK Home Office added more data to support this, finding that drug interdiction is associated more with increased violence than decreased violence.

Policing the drug war just makes it deadlier. The mechanism is not mysterious: Remove product, arrest operators, destabilize distribution chains, and thereby create business disputes. The market reconstitutes itself with more harm than before. The state then presents the next seizure as another sign of progress, as if whack-a-mole were a serious grand strategy.

The Brazilian Federal Revenue Authority and the Federal Police will pat themselves on the back. Cameras will film the timber, the uniforms, the triumphant statements, and sell us the fantasy that this is how violent trafficking groups are defeated. What they will show us is not victory, but the familiar choreography of prohibition: Roll a boulder uphill. Pour water into a sieve. Watch the market adapt. Get more federal funding to do more of the same. This is the wrong answer. It’s high time for a serious discussion on the legal regulation of cocaine.   

Top image via Drug Enforcement Administration. Inset image via Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

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Under the proposed legislation, children would need to consent to be admitted, but of course this does not account for those who will be coerced into giving consent by their parents.

Therapeutic communities—private, usually faith-based residential drug treatment facilities where patients are subjected to forced labor and other abuses—are a historical feature in Brazil. But in recent years, political investment has created a massive, parallel care network that operates largely outside the official public health system. In 2025, the Federal Prosecution Office published a damning report on the human rights violations in these institutions, based on an investigation of 43 therapeutic communities across 25 states. It described facilities in remote locations where patients were physically and pharmacologically restrained, and prevented from contacting the outside world.

Though they are nonprofits, therapeutic communities receive substantial support from government contracts. Between 2017 and 2020, federal and local governments in Brazil spent more than $100 million USD on these shadowy, weakly regulated facilities.

In 2019, the first year of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s only term, the right-wing administration brought back involuntary commitment. In 2020, a resolution expanded that to minors between ages 12 and 18. That year the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, noting that almost all of Brazil’s therapeutic communities use unscientific approaches, called upon “the Government of Brazil to implement voluntary, evidence-based treatment services with due respect for patients’ human rights,” in line with international standards.

The model built under right-wing Bolsonaro has largely persisted under left-wing Lula da Silva.

In 2021, a federal judge suspended the resolution that had expended involuntary commitment to minors. Seven former health ministers who had served under Bolsonaro and former presidents Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (who was reelected as president in 2023) then signed an open letter calling for an end to the involuntary commitment of adolescents in therapeutic communities.

The letter argued that these institutions were not appropriate for children, and echoed broader concerns about human rights violations, family separation and the diversion of public resources away from the public health system. The ministers also called for releasing the hundreds of minors being treated in therapeutic communities, and suspension of federal funding for the placement of more minors in these settings.

The model built under right-wing Bolsonaro has largely persisted under left-wing Lula da Silva. Shortly after beginning his third term in 2023, Lula created a Therapeutic Community Support Department, against the advice of his health minister at the time. This move was criticized by the National Health Council and civil society organizations. Amid calls to invest in the country’s public health care system rather than faith-based institutions, the administration made the symbolic gesture of changing the name to the Department of Entities of Support and Welcoming Acting in Alcohol and Drugs.

In 2024, the National Council on Drug Policy (CONAD) approved a resolution revoking the Bolsonaro-era authorization of involuntary commitment of minors. However, for months the Ministry of Justice delayed it from taking legal effect. During the same period, the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (CONANDA) approved and promptly published a similar resolution. The episode exposed division within the administration.

Even as the government found ongoing abuses within the therapeutic community sector, the funding always continued.

While the Ministry of Health supported shifting away from the therapeutic communities, the Ministry of Social Development maintained close ties and continued funding them. Rather than dismantling the policies of Bolsonaro, as many voters had hoped, Lula’s government appeared caught between conflicting priorities.

In late 2024, researchers from the Federal University of Minas Gerais released the results of an oversight program—commissioned by the Ministry of Social Development—covering the 500-plus therapeutic communities receiving federal funding at that time. Its descriptions of overcrowding, restrictions on family contact and other harsh practices reinforced a recurring theme: Even as the government found ongoing abuses within the therapeutic community sector, the funding always continued. 

That contradiction has become a defining feature of Brazilian drug policy. Public defenders, health councils, children’s rights groups and even federal prosecutors have repeatedly questioned the use of therapeutic communities, but each new administration continues to finance them.

Over the past several years, the National Health Council, National Human Rights Council, National Social Assistance Council, CONANDA and, eventually, CONAD, have all approved measures opposing therapeutic communities or the institutionalization of minors. Yet new federal contracts continue to be awarded, and Lula’s administration is now facilitating the likely reinstatement of adolescent treatment. Criticism has accumulated much faster than policy change.

Image of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2023 via Ricardo Stuckert PR/Palácio do Planalto/Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

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In 2021, three years into his tenure, his administration’s Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes filed a bill that aimed to tax books, which have been exempt from taxation since the 1946 constitution. Had the bill passed, books would have been slapped with a 12-percent tax rate. When the bill was filed, the National Revenue Authority sought to justify taxing books by claiming that only wealthy people read them in Brazil—a claim that is not supported by evidence. 

That same year Bolsonaro confessed that he hadn’t opened a book since taking office; he’d had no time to read due to his presidential commitments. While running for reelection in 2022, he attempted to scare his constituents by claiming that if Workers’ Party candidate Lula (who has been president since 2023) were elected, gun-owners would be at risk of seeing shooting clubs turned into libraries.    

So it’s ironic that earlier in 2026, Bolsonaro—who is currently serving a sentence of more than 27 years in prison for plotting a coup d’etat following his 2022 election loss—attracted attention for requesting to join Brazil’s pioneering program Remission Through Reading, in which for each book prisoners read and write a report about, they can shave four days from their sentence. The report is submitted to a committee or to a judge, who must deem it acceptable.

The initiative was first piloted in 2009, in the maximum-security Federal Penitentiary of Catanduvas in the State of Paraná. It was subsequently expanded to other prisons and became a national policy in 2012. The number of books is capped at 12 per year, which can reduce 48 days from a person’s sentence.

Bolsonaro would be one of countless people incarcerated in Brazil to spend more time with books while in prison, but of course not due to any shared background. Bolsonaro was very busy passing two bills passed in 27 years as a congressman, as well as chatting on WhatsApp and insulting women. Of course he had no time to read.

People must have access to books before they are dragged into the criminal-legal system.

Though it is not true that only the wealthy read books, it is the case that almost half of Brazil’s incarcerated population has not completed elementary school. More than one in four—close to 182,000 people—are incarcerated for drug-trafficking convictions, and the majority of them have no prior record and should be resentenced under recent changes to the law.

A 2025 study found that 58 percent of people associated with drug trafficking would prefer not to engage in criminalized activity if they had another way to guarantee enough income. Research shows that many people initially drop out of school because they can’t afford to spend that time not earning money.

People must have access to books—along with housing, food and other basic needs—before they are dragged into the criminal-legal system. Yet the latest data available on the School Census 2025 show that 63 percent of state schools in Brazil do not have a library. This is despite a 15-year-old piece of legislation, enacted by Lula in his second term, that makes it mandatory for every school to have a library. 

The sad reality is that while each year federal and state governments waste over $1 billion—money that would be better invested in education budget—on the Sisyphean task of combating drug use and supply, a huge part of the Brazilian population will only have access to books and time to read once they are in prison.

Image of Jair Bolsonaro (fourth from left) during March 2025 Supreme Federal Court trial, via Wikipedia/Gustavo Moreno

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Portugal and other countries had decriminalized personal possession, but it was still a civil violation. Malta’s reform was praised as a pragmatic, public health‑oriented pivot that would siphon revenue away from drug-trafficking groups and spare people the burden of a criminal-legal record. Public consumption remained banned, but people could smoke cannabis at home.

Four years later, the island nation’s governing Labour Party has changed its tune.

In May, the Parliament of Malta unanimously approved Bill 128, which sets a €235 fine for public consumption of non-medical cannabis—including “in any place where the [odor] causes a nuisance to third parties.”

Previously this had only applied to public consumption, but it now includes people smoking in the privacy of their home—if a neighbor complains about the smell. A free hotline has been set up to receive complaints. In July, warning letters began to arrive.

Wow! Instead of fighting crime and corruption they make lists & send warnings. This amendment is ILLEGAL & DANGEROUS—persecuting cannabis users! Leave us in peace & privacy at home! No privacy, no vote#reefermadness#Cannabisreform#Malta pic.twitter.com/O4mwUYBoR0

— Releaf Malta (@Releafmalta) July 10, 2025

“A lot of people were smoking on their balconies and annoying people who lived above them,” Joey Reno Vella, the executive chairperson of the Authority for the Responsible Use of Cannabis (ARUC), told the Times of Malta earlier in 2025.

The law states that no “criminal proceedings … shall be taken except at the request or with the authorization of the Authority on the Responsible Use of Cannabis.” But it becomes a court matter if the fine goes unpaid—and then what? As time goes on, how will ARUC handle people who are fined repeatedly and cannot pay?

“We’re back to punishing plants and people instead of fixing the real problems, which are housing density, social stigma and lack of safe venues,” Maltese activist and former ARUC employee Karen Mamo told Filter at an academic drug policy conference in June. CHRA have been forbidden from operating on‑site lounges.

The policy U‑turn did not come out of nowhere. Policing remained part of legalization from Day 1, targeting young people who smoked outside. Police officers pounced on those using cannabis on beaches or rooftops. Conservative lobbyists and the Catholic Church spread a narrative about Malta becoming the new Amsterdam.

In 2023, House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Claudette Pace told members of Parliament that she’d met a visually impaired man whose guide dog had gotten high from second-hand smoke. In 2024, the government launched a high-profile Responsible Cannabis Use campaign. Warnings about the fine for smoking in public or near minors appeared on billboards and Instagram posts.

The message was clear: Cannabis is still a threat to children and public order. These tired tropes ignore the fact that adults can drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes while holding a a child in their lap, and apparently not pose the same risk.

In the island’s densely populated apartment blocks, the issue of odor complaints emerged as a way to effectively roll back the 2021 protections.

Advocates fighting against piecemeal reform had finally prevailed in 2021. 

In 2011, Malta saw an historic cannabis criminalization protest led by David Caruana, who was facing charges for growing cannabis plants on his balcony; cultivation was considered to be drug trafficking, even in personal-use quantities. Advocates highlighted the case of Daniel Holmes and Barry Lee, who in 2006 had been arrested for growing five plants. Lee died by suicide while awaiting trial; Holmes was serving a 10.5-year sentence. He was released in 2018.

NGOs such as ReLeaf Malta rallied public support and pushed politicians to imagine something better. This lobbying gained traction after 2015’s Drug Dependence Act nominally decriminalized personal possession, but left police free to detain users for 48 hours. Advocates fighting against piecemeal reform finally prevailed in 2021. 

The new amendments will fall hardest on tenants who cannot control communal airflow, on working‑class youth who smoke cannabis outside because landlords ban indoor use. Cultivating the four permitted plants anywhere other than at home now comes with a fine of up to €1,000, yet the plants cannot be visible outdoors. Such fines may not deter affluent growers with detached homes and gardens, but may bankrupt someone renting a third‑floor walk‑up in Birkirkara.

The new law could easily clog the courts, with every contested fine becoming a quasi‑forensic dispute over whose nostrils caught what and when. And, perhaps most galling, the new law imposes mandatory data-sharing on CHRA—they must hand over their membership lists to ARUC, sowing fear over how that information will be used.

Malta once offered reformers across Europe a glimpse of what nationwide legalization might look like outside the Americas. Yet Malta’s rapid reversal shows how fragile reform can be and that legalization is a process, not a finish line.

Image via California Department of Public Health

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What happens if they don’t want to go? Or don’t show up for their CAIS evaluation? The government has so far not given an answer. Even at the United Nations meeting in March where the new policy was unveiled, there was not a word about what if any choice people will have in accepting their referrals.

CAIS are multidisciplinary hubs where low-income drug users can connect with essential services. On paper, this may sound like a benefit for the public health. But in practice, what this describes is essentially drug court, with cases decided by multidisciplinary teams of social workers, health care workers and legal assistants, rather than judges. Like many similar endeavors in the United States, this is law enforcement disguised under a therapeutic banner. 

If the team deems the person they’re evaluating to be at sufficient risk—perhaps due to race, poverty, mental or behavioral health problems or lack of documentation—that person could easily be funneled into treatment pathways that are neither effective nor voluntary. 

Portugal’s decrim was accompanied by changes to public messaging and investment in syringe service programs. 

As the public treatment system is sorely strained, many people will be referred to the treatment centers privately run by therapeutic communities. Often faith-based, these are forced labor camps that operate with minimal oversight and rampant human rights abuses. And of course, many of the owners who profit off them have close ties to the current administration. 

Under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s current term, these communities are not only surviving—they’re thriving. Despite the progressive image Lula continues to cultivate, his administration has maintained funding for involuntary commitment and deepened its relationship with therapeutic community leaders. 

Former Minister of Health Nísia Trindade had advocated for more evidence-based and humane drug policy, but she was dismissed in February. A December 2022 report led by Trinande had recommended scrapping all policies legitimizing therapeutic communities and involuntary commitment. That report has since disappeared from the Brazilian government’s websites. So much for evidence-based policy.

The new model cites Portugal’s success with decriminalization. But that success came from approaching drug use as an enduring part of society rather than something to eradicate. It didn’t just focus on treatment. It was also accompanied by changes to public education around drugs—like retiring abstinence-only messaging in schools—and by investment in syringe service programs. While in Portugal’s model quantities of drugs that constitute personal possession are still confiscated, any treatment referrals that follow are not mandatory.

Brazil’s new CAIS model pays lip-service to structural change. But with just 22 centers currently operational and nearly 100 still in development, it is only prepared for superficial change. The government is considering video-call evaluations to fill the gap. How much individual attention can each case possible receive?

Brazil’s approach to drug use is reflected in its deep social inequalities.

It’s not the first time Brazil has clumsily flirted with progressive drug reform. Under Lula’s first term, the 2006 law that removed prison penalties for drug possession ended up fueling the current mass incarceration crisis, as people were sentenced as drug traffickers rather than drug users. Today, more than 888,000 people are incarcerated in Brazil, with about one in four cases related to drugs. 

The issue of charging people with trafficking rather than possession, due to subjective enforcement by police, is one Portugal has had to reckon with also. Decriminalization did not empty Portugal’s prisons, and drug possession accounted for only about 1 percent of the prison population to begin with.

Brazil’s approach to drug use is reflected in its deep social inequalities. In cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, drug laws have long served as tools for police to reinforce racial and class hierarchies. The police forces that will be referring Black, low-income drug users to social services are also the ones widely known for violent crackdowns on those same communities. 

Brazil requires an approach designed for its mass incarceration crisis, the third-largest in the world. Without investment in harm reduction and social services, and non-stigmatizing messaging around drug use, decriminalization will simply be a lucrative new endeavor for rehab profiteers. Drug treatment, like any other treatment, should be voluntary, secular and rights-based. Anything less is window dressing.

Image via Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management

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The news comes amid growing concern and moral panic over record use of ketamine, an anesthetic with dissociative effects, in recent years. Among people aged 16-24, the government reports the rate of use as 2.9 percent—more popular than any state-banned drug except cannabis. 

Ketamine can be prescribed off-label as a depression treatment in the UK, though not on the National Health Service (NHS). However, a small number of deaths related to unregulated ketamine use—meaning ketamine was present, but not that it was necessarily the direct or sole cause of death—have been reported. 

These include one case which, in November, prompted a coroner to call for reclassification of the drug. She wrote that its current Class B status was “likely to encourage others to start to use it or continue to use it under the false impression it is ‘safer.’”

The government might now redesignate ketamine as a Class A substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. 

Possession of Class B drugs is punishable by up to 5 years in prison, while supply or production might bring a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. Possession of a Class A drug, on the other hand, can be punished with up to 7 years in prison, and supply or production can lead to life imprisonment. (Unlimited fines may also apply in all cases.)

The relationship between evidence and the policies pursued by British governments—both Conservative and Labour—offers little reassurance.

Dame Diana Johnson, the Labour government’s minister for policing, fire and crime prevention, will reportedly write to the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) requesting advice, and “carefully consider” its recommendations before making a decision. 

But the relationship between evidence and the policies pursued by British governments—both Conservative and Labour—offers little reassurance.

In 2023, the Conservative government blatantly disregarded the ACMD when the government-appointed body recommended against scheduling nitrous oxide as a Class C drug. This was a clear case of policy-based evidence-making, rather than evidence-based policymaking—driven by a desire to appease populist narratives about so-called “yobs” and antisocial behavior. 

Despite some ideological differences, the Labour Party, which won the 2024 election, has repeatedly shown a similar attitude, embracing “tough on crime” rhetoric to appeal to public anxieties. The reclassification of ketamine, if pursued, would reflect the same harmful trajectory, prioritizing political return over the likely negative outcomes.

One of the many lessons we can learn from the history of prohibition in the UK (as elsewhere) is that neither ketamine use nor any problems associated with it will be erased by implementing more draconian penalties. 

Take cocaine and MDMA, for instance, both Class A substances. Their presence in pubs and clubs throughout the UK underscores the failure of criminalization to curb demand or supply—the original purpose of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Despite the threat of harsh penalties, vendors openly advertise on platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, offering deals such as the “three for £100” typical for cocaine. Sales contacts can even be found on stickers with QR codes, call cards or lighters left at student halls, mailboxes and other public spaces. 

What intensifying penalties for ketamine will do is ruin more lives through criminalization and incarceration, and dissuade people experiencing problematic use from seeking help.

This widespread availability underscores a critical lesson: Criminalization fails to deter drug use or disrupt the illicit market it aims to suppress. 

What intensifying penalties for ketamine will do is ruin more lives through criminalization and incarceration, and dissuade people experiencing problematic use from seeking help. It will additionally increase the burden on an already overwhelmed criminal justice system—court backlogs have reached historic levels in England and Wales. 

Costly prisons and courts are among the ways prohibition wastes taxpayers’ pounds. In 2022, the Transform Drug Policy Foundation estimated that the UK spends almost £7 billion annually on drug law enforcement—expenditure that exacerbates harms to individuals and communities.

If the goal is genuinely to address harms associated with ketamine use, a public health approach is essential. Education about the risks of ketamine and funding for harm reduction and treatment services are far more effective than punitive measures. Policymakers must also grapple with the structural issues driving problematic drug use, including poverty and a national mental health crisis.

Recently, psychiatrist Owen Bowden-Jones, an addiction consultant and honorary professor at University College London, suggested that many young people using ketamine are self-medicating for mental health issues. It wouldn’t be surprising if future evidence confirms this given the current crisis in the NHS, where one struggles to get even a GP appointment. Addressing root causes of problematic drug use requires a commitment to long-term investment in social services and infrastructure—a commitment often absent from both Conservative and Labour platforms.

As both major parties compete to appear tougher on crime without considering evidence or consequences, UK drug policy is trapped in a pattern of penal populism. Further criminalization of people who use or sell ketamine may win approving headlines, but will cause more harm while doing no good. Labour’s eagerness to mirror the Conservatives betrays a lack of the political imagination and courage required to break the cycle of ineffective and unjust drug policy.

Photograph of the headquarters of the UK Home Office by Steve Cadman via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

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On June 26, justices ruled that personal possession of cannabis is defined as up to 40 grams, and up to six plants. More than that is considered possession with intent to sell, and selling remans criminalized. The Supreme Court has ordered the National Council of Justice to conduct a national survey to identify people currently incarcerated for possession of cannabis under 40 grams, so that their sentences can be commuted and they can go home. But this is Brazil; it’s difficult to imagine that happening on a large scale.

Research has indicated that in 2019, more than one in three people prosecuted for selling cannabis were carrying less than 40 grams.

For now, people found with under 40 grams still have to appear in court but can no longer be fined or sentenced to community service. Judges are supposed to either refer defendants to a class about the harms of drug use, or else just send them home. However, judges find many creative justifications for prosecuting someone as a drug seller even if they had under 40 grams, especially if that someone is Black. Perhaps they had cash with them, or the cannabis was in multiple bags rather than just one.

Brazil’s police lobby is very powerful.

Police will still confiscate cannabis when they find it, no matter the amount, but possession that falls under the threshold should not result in imprisonment—at least for now. The ruling is only a temporary one. It will expire in December, by which time Congress is supposed to have amended federal drug law with the thresholds that will be enforced permanently. But there’s no guarantee that Congress won’t simply let the deadline pass.

This is the same Congress that is currently attempting to criminalize possession of any quantity of any illicit substance. The amendment, proposed by the far-right Senate, was prompted by the Supreme Court case. If approved, it would supercede the Court’s ruling. It will now be voted on by the most reactionary Congress since post-dictatorship redemocratization 50 years ago. Constitutional amendments require no presidential approval and cannot be vetoed. They can only be challenged in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court trial has focused on just cannabis. But when it began in 2015, justices were originally planning to consider decriminalizing all banned drugs, as many neighboring Latin American countries have done, and as we saw briefly achieved in Oregon and British Columbia.

Progress is never set in stone. We saw decriminalization move forward in Oregon and British Columbia, and then saw it pushed backward by reactionary pressure.

The police lobby in Brazil is very powerful. Punishment and criminalization are celebrated by the public. New private prisons are being built. Most states in Brazil have elected right-wing or far-right governors. As in the United States, arrests and seizures are trumpeted on social media, and are extremely lucrative for law enforcement.

Photograph by Bernardo Jardim Ribeiro/Creative Commons 3.0

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Under current law, possession of larger amounts is criminalized as distribution and punished with a mandatory minimum of five years in prison. Smaller amounts are frequently punished with incarceration alternatives and “treatment,”but it’s up to police to decide how much is considered larger or smaller, which has resulted in disproportionate prosecution of Black people. One senator who voted in favor of the PEC stated, “Let’s leave it up to the person who makes the seizure and the judge to assess it on a case-by-case basis.”

The PEC doesn’t itself mean more people would be sentenced to prison time. But it’s a reactionary move that seeks to wipe away the category of personal possession, which is the STF trial stands to decriminalize. The trial, which has focused particularly on marijuana, resumed March 6 after a six-month break.

The vote is now five to three in favor of decriminalization, with one more vote in favor needed to end the trial.

It’s been almost nine years since the trial had its initial hearing, and 15 years since it first reached the STF. Internal STF regulations stipulate that the first the rapporteur votes, then the voting proceeds in order, from the longest-serving justice to the most recently appointed.

As was expected, on March 6 conservative Justices André Mendonça and Nunes Marques voted against decriminalization. The vote tally is now five to three in favor of decriminalization, with one more vote in favor needed to end the trial.

Two remaining STF justices, out of a total of 11, have yet to vote, and it’s unclear how they will vote or when. We could have expected a “No” from Flavio Dino, Lula’s former Minister of Justice who was appointed to the Supreme Court by the president in 2023 to succeed Rosa Weber. But as she already voted before stepping down, he isn’t eligible to vote.

Mendonça defended his “No” by making false claims about harms of marijuana use, including increased risk of suicide as well as risks to fetuses when marijuana is used during pregnancy. And, of course, he used the old trope that marijuana is a gateway drug, calling it “the first step towards the precipice,” and conflated decriminalization with legalization—saying that “in practice, we are legalizing use.” 

An opponent of home cultivation, he also claimed that a single plant—depending on the growing conditions—can yield up to 600 grams of dried flower. He proposed that the possession threshold be 10 grams, and suggested that the National Congress should come up with definitive threshold within 180 days. It’s difficult to imagine this happening.

Marques defended his “No” vote by appealing to populism and empty legalism. He cherry-picked a few studies to justify false claims about health risks of psychotic disorders and memory loss. He claimed that low-income Brazilian parents do not warn their children about drug use, saying “the main argument that the Brazilian family has” against marijuana is its illegality. 

The hearing will now be stalled for at least 90 more days.

STF Rapporteur Gilmar Mendes, along with Justices Alexandre de Moraes, Rosa Weber and Roberto Barroso, all of whom have already cast their votes in favor of decriminalization, believe the threshold should be 60 grams. Marques, along with Cristiano Zanin who has also voted against it, see 25 grams or six female plants as the limit. Mendoca (who voted against) and Edson Fachin, who voted in favor, say that the thresholds must be decided by the National Congress.

At the end of the session, Justice Toffoli, nominated by President Lula during his second mandate in 2009, used the strategy that conservatives have been mobilizing throughout the nine years of the case: He requested further time to review the matter. In this instance, he claimed the reason was that he could not yet determine what the appropriate threshold should be.

Justice Barroso, who currently occupies the presidential chair, voted in favor of decriminalization back in 2015. He noted that “prohibition does not protect public health, it rather compromises it,” and that the drug war had failed. He also underscored the inconsistency in decriminalizing personal possession while still criminalizing other activities like production and sale of drugs, and contended that the legislative branch would eventually need to address this incongruity through potential legalization.

In 2023, after Justice Zanin voted against decriminalization, Barroso admonished him about how criminalization discourages people from accessing hospital care, since hospitals were obligated to report suspected drug use: “If you seek public health care as a drug user, if that is considered a crime.”

The hearing will now be stalled for at least 90 more days. As a glimmer of hope, it falls to Barroso to determine when voting will resume.

Image via City of Los Angeles

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“There is a strong case in principle for safer consumption facilities to be introduced.”

SCS “have the potential to tackle many of the drug-related harms being faced in Edinburgh,” the report states. “Legal challenges remain, but the recent decision regarding the Glasgow facility demonstrates these are not insurmountable. Therefore, there is a strong case in principle for safer consumption facilities to be introduced.”

The report appears to have been published on February 12. It was commissioned by the Edinburgh Alcohol and Drug Partnership in January 2023, and according to advocates local authorities have delayed its publication. It was posted to the Edinburgh city government website with no accompanying announcement.

A report outlining next steps is expected by March 12.

As cocaine use rises across Scotland, harm reduction services still operate from a framework designed for opioids, and as such the report described SCS potentially struggling to accommodate the needs of people using cocaine. Understanding opioid-based patterns of drug use as the default also heightens stigma against stimulant users, with some people who contributed lived experience to the report expressing concern over “uncontrollable” episodes of “aggression and paranoia.”

The report also identified the presence of nitazenes (a class of synthetic opioids) in the United Kingdom’s drug supply as a source of growing concern. The authors underscore that “Edinburgh—alongside the rest of the UK—faces the prospect of increased levels of synthetic opioids in the drug supply chain,” and that nitazenes have been found in samples of drugs sold as oxycodone in the city, tested at WEDINOS. They state that “2023 saw spikes in drug deaths in a number of regions across the UK that were associated with nitazenes and other synthetic opioids. In the context of a significant—and possibly sustained—reduction in the global supply of raw opium, the risk of increased synthetic opioid use is pronounced.”

The report additionally outlines considerations related to legal practices, emphasizing the need for collaboration with police to minimize the threat of prosecution for drug possession.

Scottish SCS could not legally accommodate peer-assisted injection.

SCS operations are not sanctioned by the UK Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) 1971, which bans possession of controlled substances. However, recently Scotland has seen a move toward de facto authorization that would in theory allow people to access SCS without being criminalized.

“I would be prepared to publish a prosecution policy that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute drug users for simple possession offenses committed within a pilot safer drugs consumption facility,” Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, Scotland’s top law enforcement officer, stated in September 2023.

The provision of drug “paraphernalia” is permissible under the UK’s Misuse of Drugs Regulation 2001, with exemptions already utilized in existing services. However, unlike some overdose prevention sites in Canada and elsewhere, Scottish SCS could not legally accommodate peer-assisted injection. This would prevent them from serving scores of people who prefer or rely on assistance from peers to inject, or who inject parts of their body besides their arms. As Scotland’s approach to drug use becomes more humane, we can hope it will become more equitable as well.

Photograph of safe consumption site in Canada via State of Massachusetts 

Correction, February 16: Due to an editorial miscommunication, the original version of this article contained a section about nitazenes that did not accurately reflect the author’s views. The article has been revised with the author’s agreement, and Filter apologizes for the error. 

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Cracolândia can refer to any of a number of locations demonized for public drug use and homelessness. But the long-time favorite target of politicians and media is in the one at São Paulo’s city center.

The São Paulo State Military Police (PMSP) is the largest state police force in Brazil. New units are inaugurated regularly, but this one is notable because it’s essentially being operated from Cracolândia‘s doorstep. The current patrols harassing the neighborhood by foot, by car, by horseback, are not enough. Now, a new tactical base will see PMSP officers stationed there 24/7.

By the end of March, Freitas expects to have 300 officers stationed at the base.

The base is starting off with 48 officers. By the end of March, Freitas expects to have 300.

“The police’s mission … is to arrest criminals,” São Paulo Secretary of Public Security Guilherme Derrite told Metropoles in Portuguese. “However, when [the PMSP officer] goes to arrest the criminal within this open scene of [drug] use, he will come across drug addicts, homeless people.”

In an ominous sign, Freitas has additionally promised to implement a new 12-month training initiative. It is intended give the PMSP officers stationed at Cracolândia—many of whom will be relatively young and inexperienced—a basic understanding of substance use disorder and street-based homelessness. To incentivize enrollment, São Paulo will pay each officer approximately $240 USD.

With the 2024 municipal election looming, this seems sure to result in residents forcibly removed from Cracolândia and institutionalized by authorities who claim it’s for their own good. Meanwhile, real estate developers clamoring to gentrify Cracolândia are circling.

Freitas has repeatedly vowed to end Cracolândia.

During 2023, Freitas’ first year in office, reports of rising violence and theft have helped scapegoat people who use drugs and justify PMSP killing more and more people. This included “Operation Shield,” a 40-day bloodbath that left at least 28 people dead.

It was the second-deadliest massacre in Brazil’s recorded history. Authorities justified it with the all-too-familiar rhetoric of the drug war: claiming that people who sell drugs, and who therefore must have certainly been affiliated with transnational drug trafficking organizations, opened fire upon seeing the approaching patrol units; so there had been no choice but to retaliate with deadly force. This narrative epitomizes the violence and impunity of drug policy in Brazil as a whole.

Freitas has repeatedly vowed to end Cracolândia. Ahead of the 2024 election, his political posturing has a ready partner in incumbent mayor Ricardo Nunes, who seeks a second term. Both cater to constituents of former president Jair Bolsonaro who believe that homelessness and public drug use are best solved by heavy surveillance and policing, rather than with housing.

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

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