{"id":28374,"date":"2020-11-11T15:54:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T15:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/noticias\/u-s-states-make-progress-on-ending-war-on-drugs\/"},"modified":"2021-04-01T12:49:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T12:49:32","slug":"u-s-states-make-progress-on-ending-war-on-drugs","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/u-s-states-make-progress-on-ending-war-on-drugs\/","title":"U.S. states make progress on ending \u201cwar on drugs\u201d","content":"<div class=\"tts_content_wrapper_1\" ><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In referendums running parallel to the presidential election, voters from six U.S. states guaranteed at the ballot box on Tuesday, November 3, significant progress that could help <\/span><b>put an end to the War on Drugs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five states \u2013 Arizona, South Dakota, New Jersey, Montana and Mississippi \u2013 approved the <\/span><b>legalization of marijuana for recreational or medical purposes<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, ensuring that at least a third of the country\u2019s population have legal access to the substance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, Oregon stood out for becoming the <\/span><b>first state to decriminalize the possession and personal use of all drugs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Anyone caught with small amounts of cocaine, heroin, LSD or methamphetamine, among others, will not be arrested or prosecuted, but instead referred to the health services. The experiment is inspired by Portugal, which took this same path in 2000.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cDecriminalizing drug use means looking at the issue from a <\/span><b>public health perspective and not from a criminal perspective<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The ideology of the so-called \u2018War on Drugs\u2019 after all these years has left only a trail of people who are either dead, marginalized or relegated to overcrowded prisons,\u201d said Henrique Apolin\u00e1rio, a lawyer from the Program to Combat Institutional Violence at Conectas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a result of this voting outcome, <\/span><b>15 out of the 50 U.S. states now permit the recreational use of marijuana and 35 states allow the medical use of the drug<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It is noteworthy that a large number of conservative states have introduced policies to decriminalize cannabis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Progress was also made voting for prosecutors who campaigned on a platform of <\/span><b>reducing the harassment of people arrested with small amounts of drugs <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 like in Austin \u2013 or increasing the oversight of police action, in places like San Diego and Minneapolis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"infogram-embed\" data-id=\"77062ea5-c4e6-49f9-b9d1-eff945d3f143\" data-type=\"interactive\" data-title=\"EUA | Plebiscito Drogas 2020\"><\/div>\n<p><script>!function(e,i,n,s){var t=\"InfogramEmbeds\",d=e.getElementsByTagName(\"script\")[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement(\"script\");o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src=\"https:\/\/e.infogram.com\/js\/dist\/embed-loader-min.js\",d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,\"infogram-async\");<\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Brazil\u2019s turn<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Brazil, the main debate on the <\/span><b>decriminalization of drug possession for personal use has been stalled in the Supreme Court <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">since 2015.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In October 2019, the then president of the court, Justice Dias Toffoli, decided once again to <\/span><b>postpone the judgment<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which had been scheduled for the beginning of November but was removed from the agenda to make way for the case on imprisonment after loss of first appeal.\u00a0<\/span><b>Three of the eleven justices have already voted in favor <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of a Special Appeal submitted by the S\u00e3o Paulo Public Defender\u2019s Office calling for decriminalization, although there is no consensus on which substances should be included.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conectas, the Brazilian Drug Policy Platform, ITTC (Land, Labor and Citizenship Institute), Pastoral Carcer\u00e1ria (the Catholic Church\u2019s prisoner outreach service) and the Sou da Paz Institute, among other organizations involved with human rights, are \u201camici curiae\u201d \u2013 institutions accepted to contribute with technical information in court rulings \u2013 in the case and they have explained the recent advances on the topic around the world, as well as the <\/span><b>impacts of the criminalization of the black population in Brazil<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The organizations argue that Law 11,343 of 2006 is another example of a law that reflects the <\/span><b>ideology of the so-called \u201cwar on drugs\u201d<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since the introduction of the law, the number of people imprisoned for drug-related crimes has <\/span><b>risen more than 500%<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2013 the majority are black and poor \u2013 and it is the main reason why Brazil has the world\u2019s third largest prison population.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The figures are particularly <\/span><b>alarming among women<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Between 2006 and 2019, the number of women in prison rose from 17,216 to 37,197, an increase of 116%.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Criminalization denies access to people who use drugs for medical purposes. This year, ANVISA (National Health Regulatory Agency) has come under strong pressure to <\/span><b>obstruct scientific and medicinal access to cannabis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Similarly, Brazil has realigned itself with conservative countries in the UN to prevent greater access to the plant for research, as suggested by the WHO.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe option for criminalization keeps drug users away from social and health services, increasing the risks of problematic use,\u201d explained Apolin\u00e1rio, \u201cwhile at the same time giving the police broad powers to search for minute quantities of drugs, at the expense of the privacy and freedom of a large part of the population,\u201d he concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"tts__custom-position_bottom_fixed\" ><\/div>","excerpt":"<p>In a vote running parallel to the presidential election, Americans vote for the decriminalization of marijuana and other substances<\/p>\n","author":2,"featured_media":28375,"parent":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,731,12369,14,194,808,816],"tema":[12270],"class_list":["post-28374","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-drugs","tag-elections","tag-marijuana","tag-tag-3-en","tag-supreme-court","tag-united-states","tag-war-on-drugs","tema-confronting-institutional-violence"],"acf":{"subtitle-pt":"In a vote running parallel to the presidential election, Americans vote for the decriminalization of marijuana and other 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