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Related: News: Drug Policy in Latin America | Submitted by GiannaCh
On January 11th, Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso signed the new anti-drug law, that will become the most advanced law of its kind in Latin America, because, among other things, it makes a clear distinction between a drug trafficker and an addict.
Read more at Brazil new law
At the same time, Bolivia, trapped between the "war on drugs" and the free market, has entered the new year convulsed by protest, repression and death. The Bolivian president-by-default Jorge Quiroga decided to make the purchase and sale of coca leaf in the vast Chapare region, the eastern slope of the Andes mountains, illegal. Farmers have protested against coca eradication, since coca leaf is part of indigenous tradition and furthermore, since the government does not offer a realistic and viable solution for cultivations alternative to coca. More than 60 farmers have been killed during the past months by the military and the police and congressman Evo Morales, a leader of the farmers, after being stripped of his Congressional immunity, has started a hunger strike.
Read more at Repression vs Coca Growers
and El Mallku Speaks: Indigenous Autonomy & Coca | |
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Re: Drug Policy in Latin America (Score: 1)
by giannaCh on Thursday, April 10 @ 17:10:31 EEST
(User Info) | A top anti-crime official in the government of Brazilian President Lula da Silva has publicly called for the decriminalization of drugs.
The call by Public Safety Secretary Luiz Eduardo Soares comes on the heels of public statements by Regina Benevides of the Health Ministry late last month that broke with the prohibitionist policies of the past.
The statement by Soares, in a public forum in Porto Alegre last night, reveals, once again, that there is a fierce battle underway at the highest levels inside the Lula administration over the future of drug policy.
Soares acknowledged that "this is not the government's position," but it is clear that he would like it to be, and has turned to Civil Society for help.
The voices in tune with Civil Society - like those of Public Safety Secretary Luiz Eduardo Soares and Regina Benevides of the Health Ministry - are in conflict with the leftover and tired advocates of the previous drug policy - imposed upon Brazil and other nations by Washington and Wall Street - a policy that has failed to impede any problems associated with drug use and that has caused a larger problem: the creation of the narco and all the violence and corruption it brings.
Read more at
http://www.narconews.com/Issue29/article731.html |
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