Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jan 2002
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2002 Independent Media Institute
Contact: http://www.alternet.org/discuss/
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Philip Smith, DRCNet
Note: Philip Smith is the editor of DRCNet's Week Online

NOT SO FAST ON REFORM LEGISLATION IN BRAZIL

It was reported last week that the Brazilian legislature had passed and 
President Fernando Cardoso was ready to sign a bill that would keep 
small-time drug offenders out of prison (see this article.). But Cardoso, 
who had given the green light for the legislature to pass the 10-year-old 
reform bill in December, has now vetoed the bill's provisions that would 
have eased penalties, citing constitutional reasons. Cardoso did, however, 
sign provisions of the bill enhancing penalties for drug traffickers.

Under current Brazilian law, possession of a joint can get the same 
six-month to two-year sentence as possession of a pound of cocaine. The new 
law would have allowed for alternatives, including treatment, community 
service, fines, or license suspensions. It was widely hailed in South 
America's largest and most populous nation, where marijuana smoking occurs 
openly on its fabled beaches and in the nightclubs of Rio and Sao Paulo.

At a January 11 news conference, Gen. Alberto Cardoso, the president's top 
security adviser, told reporters President Cardoso vetoed some of the 
articles because they failed to specify the length of alternative 
sentences, according to a Reuters account. Another vetoed article would 
have permitted jailed traffickers to move out of maximum security 
facilities after having served a third of their sentence.

According to Gen. Cardoso, President Cardoso would send substitute 
legislation to congress that would retain the essence of the original 
bill's commitment to alternative sentences for minor drug crimes. He will 
do so in time for congress to approve the substitute proposal before the 
rest of the law goes into effect in 45 days, said Cardoso.

"The Brazilian government's philosophy... is a reduction in demand and a 
reduction in supply, heavily repressing traffickers while treating users as 
people with an illness who need to be attended to, not as criminals," 
Cardoso said.

The shift in Brazilian drug policy comes under the glowering gaze of the 
United States. Brazil has been the object of US diplomatic pressure to 
support American efforts to use fighting the drug trade as a means of 
extending its political and military influence in Latin America. But while 
the US has broad regional pretensions, it has been most directly concerned 
with gathering support for its intervention in Colombia.

As the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a nonprofit Washington watchdog, 
noted in a special investigative report last July (www.public-i.org.), the 
war on drugs has provided a convenient rationale for a rapprochement 
between the Brazilian and US militaries, with the US providing assistance 
for Brazil's Plan Cobra (Colombia- Brazil), which has increased the 
Brazilian military presence along the border with Colombia. As Brazil has 
reluctantly and partially gone along with US policy in Colombia, the US aid 
spigot is opening wider. US drug war aid to Brazil increased from $1.2 
million in 1999 to $5 million in 2000 and rises dramatically to $15 million 
this year.

"The significant increase in resources requested for Brazil," the State 
Department noted, "is needed to support programs designed to combat the 
growing problem of cross-border narcotrafficking, such as Operation Cobra, 
and in response to measures needed to support the administration's overall 
Andean Regional Initiative for Colombia and the bordering countries."

The Brazilian military seems well aware it is making a potentially faustian 
bargain with the US, but is plunging ahead regardless. "During the Cold 
War, communism served as a frame for the US to exercise their influence in 
the American continent," Gen. Cardoso told CPI's Independent Center for 
Investigative Journalism. "As the conjuncture of communism ended, it 
[narcotics trafficking] appeared naturally as a new cause to justify the 
same geopolitical and geostrategic interests. In that case, the war on 
drugs justifies for the US their external military operations."

If the Brazilian state is willing to kowtow to the Americans for the sake 
of closer military cooperation and the opportunity for boodle, Brazil's 
body politic is at least prepared to move forward on sentencing, at least 
if President Cardoso holds to his word.
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