World

By Thiago Mattos
TheSequitur.com Contributor
May 29, 2006

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Every first week of May, close to 200 cities around the world organize to promote the Global Marijuana March. This year, Rio de Janeiro’s committee decided to make their march different.

After concluding that marijuana legalization is not enough to end the violence linked to drug dealing, organizers of the March for Drug Legalization decided to discuss the legalization of other illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin.

Protesters, which included dozens of courageous people – students, liberal professionals, militants, activists and enthusiastic walkers – caught the attention of commuters as they left work.

Contrary to common public perception, the organizers – the National Movement for Drugs Legalization and the non-governmental organization Psicotropicus – did not apologize for drug use nor permit the consumption of drugs during the protest.

“The prohibition of drugs today is worse than the bad effects of the drugs themselves,” said Renato Cinco, a march organizer. For protesters, the drug prohibition policy promotes violence (by leading drug dealers to fight over sales territory and also encouraging police repression in return) inherent to the issue.

“We are not forming a movement to encourage people to use drugs, but to discuss with society another way to see the problem, a way that brings no violence as a consequence,” Cinco said.

According to the event organizers, drug legalization would require several intermediate steps, like the implementation of a damage reduction policy that would give appropriate assistance to the dependent consumers. We would need a strong, clear publicity campaign and a consumer’s warning, and all of it needs to be done with the same money that is used in the war on drugs today and with the taxes that drugs could bring.

However, the city of Rio de Janeiro presents a unique reality, different from any other city in the world in its drug trafficking.

Following Marxist theory, we can realize the class war that goes up on the hill and the narrow streets of Rio de Janeiro´s favelas (slums), such as on the drug dealers chased and also on the criminalization of consumers.

Nevertheless, the ideological argument spread is the same that justifies the use of violence by the State against the poor population that lives in the favelas.

The day-by-day traffic war in Rio de Janeiro criminalizes poverty – and therefore the favelas begin to look like enemy territory. Corrupt cops do not give protection; they invade, occupy and kill. Consumers bribe police and feel guilty by their pleasure.

The discussion that the drug legalization march brings does not stop here. We need to exchange experiences, inform ourselves about the interests of those behind anti-drug policy, realize what and whom drug traffic sustains and, before everything, we need to be willing to change our opinion.

The topic is rich and the discussion is urgently valid.
[Images by the author]