The Drug Law delegates responsibility to the judge in the case for defining whether the drug is intended for personal consumption or trafficking. To do this, the judge must consider the quantity, the nature of the drug, under what conditions the seizure occurred, in addition to the social and personal circumstances, the conduct and background of the person involved.
Criticisms of the law. For Cristiano Maronna, director of the Justa research center and doctor in criminal law from USP (University of São Paulo), the Senate ignores other issues in relation to drug policy in the PEC discussion, such as the standard of approaches and the profile of prisoners , mostly made up of black and poor people.
The PEC also defines that alternative penalties will be applied to the user, without the need for prison. The difference is also already in the 2006 standard, which establishes as punitive measures for personal consumers the “warning about the effects of the drug, provision of services to the community and educational measure of attendance at an educational program or course”.
The last part of the proposal being analyzed in the Senate is new. In addition to the alternative sentences, it says that the user will be subjected to “addiction treatment”. Experts see that this wording could even open a loophole for compulsory hospitalization of drug addicts.
The Senate is in some way approving the state of affairs that exists today, which is a situation that promotes many injustices. Not only does it condemn users as drug dealers, but it gives carte blanche to police lethality, which is what we are seeing in several operations aimed at drug trafficking.
Cristiano Maronna, doctor in criminal law
