• AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    5 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Brazil decriminalized marijuana for personal use on Wednesday, making the nation of 203 million the largest to take such a measure and the latest sign of a growing global acceptance of the drug.

    Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that Brazilians could possess up to 40 grams of cannabis — roughly enough for 80 joints — without facing penalties, a decision that would take effect within days and stand for the next 18 months.

    Many more countries have decriminalized marijuana, meaning they abolished criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of the drug, though it technically remains illegal and authorities still target traffickers.

    He was sentenced to two months of community service, but his lawyer appealed, arguing that punishing drug users violated Brazil’s Constitution.

    In the ruling, Chief Justice Luís Roberto Barroso said the decision does not condone marijuana use but rather recognized failed drug policies, which have led to the mass incarceration of poor youth, pushing many of them into organized crime.

    “Skin color counts when it comes to how drug law is applied,” said Cristiano Maronna, director of Justa, a research group that investigates the Brazilian justice system.


    The original article contains 1,005 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • NMeneses@lemmings.world
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    5 months ago

    As a Brazilian myself it couldn’t have been any better day for the progressive society which was rooting in a dark place of uncertainty for far too long for a closure on this issue (which has been postponed/dragging for over a decade).

    However have no shred of doubt cause the dilema is still swirling. It does bring some medicine to a deep divide in Brazil’s social fabric involving a biting topic: the police’s social profiling over race and social class that is an institutionalized teaching impregnated in the police mentality.

    The Brazilian judicial system is scrambling to finish cases resting in tribunals, and this can bring about a needed end. Furthermore the country’s penitentiary system is overwhelmingly filled with people of color and poor for petty crime such as drug possession. It could come to an end.

    Anyhow, the right wing is already battling this verdict at its own benefit as it’s rallying the narrative that the Supreme Court has overturned and disavowed the legislative’s say on the matter, by insinuating that Brazil is living under a “dictatorship of the judiciary” by overstepping on the legislative.