Brazil countries/br.yaml
In June 2024 the Supreme Court ruled that possessing cannabis for personal use is not a crime, and set a presumption: up to 40 g counts as personal use.[@conectas,sechat] It is still prohibited — the cannabis is seized and the person receives an administrative measure such as a warning or a mandatory educational course.[@sechat] Police can still treat someone under 40 g as a dealer if there is other evidence, such as scales or packaging.[@gv] The ruling is traced in the [2024 decision](/history/brazil-supreme-court-2024/).
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The same ruling presumes that up to six female plants are for personal use, so growing them is an administrative infraction rather than a crime. It is not a right to grow: plants are seized.[@sechat] Some patients hold individual court orders allowing them to cultivate.[@gv]
Users are no longer criminally punished, but Brazil's drug law is harsh on anyone classed as a dealer, and critics note that the line is drawn unevenly, falling hardest on poor and Black Brazilians.[@conectas,gv]
Offering a drug occasionally, without aiming at profit, to someone the person knows, so that the two of them use it together, is a separate crime: detention of six months to one year and a fine of 700 to 1,500 day-fines.[@lei] Other unauthorised supply, including a gift that does not meet those conditions, can be trafficking even when no money changes hands, with five to fifteen years.[@lei]
Use remains an unlawful act subject to administrative measures, not criminal ones. Public use still leads to police stops and seizure.[@gv,sechat]
No adult-use sales. Pharmacies sell registered cannabis products on prescription, and patients can import with authorisation from the health regulator.[@anvisa,gv]
In February 2026 the health regulator published rules allowing companies to cultivate low- … ceutical and research purposes under special authorisation, after a 2024 high-court order.[@anvisa] The cultivation rules took effect on 4 August 2026, and patient associations may grow for their members in a supervised trial scheme.[@anvisa] No adult-use production.[@anvisa]
Prescription oils and extracts, mostly CBD-dominant; no legal flower for general sale.
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Doctors can prescribe registered or imported cannabis products — prescription oils and extracts, mostly CBD-dominant, with no legal flower for general sale; costs are high, and patient associations and court-authorised home growers fill part of the gap.[@anvisa,gv]
Administrative measures do not create a criminal record. The ruling opened the way to review past convictions for small amounts.[@conectas]
Law 11.343 does not name seeds. It treats sowing or growing plants for a small amount for … g without authorisation, or supplying raw material for drugs, as trafficking (Article 33).[@lei]
Brazil's clubs are patient associations rather than recreational ones. No law licenses them to grow; they rely on court orders, usually preventive habeas corpus, obtained one association at a time.[@sechat40] A 2024 industry yearbook counted 259 cannabis associations and three federations, serving about 147,000 patients, roughly a fifth of the country's medical cannabis patients.[@sechat40] Only 40 held an individual or collective court authorisation to cultivate: 23 in the Southeast, 11 in the Northeast, 4 in the South, 2 in the Centre- West and none in the North.[@sechat40] The rest work without that protection.[@sechat40]
Recreational cannabis is supplied entirely by the illegal trade, and marijuana is by far the largest drug by weight that police seize.[@aen24] The federal public-security data system recorded 816 tonnes of marijuana seized nationwide … tonnes of all drugs, an average of 3.3 tonnes a day and about the same as a year earlier.[@aen24] Three states account for most of it: Paraná with 320 tonnes, Mato Grosso do Sul with 300 and São Paulo with 75.[@aen24]
No count of cannabis arrests was found, but the drug law is a main driver of the world's t … sharply over twenty years as people caught with small amounts were treated as traffickers.[@gi24] The Supreme Court's 2024 ruling that under 40 g of cannabis is presumed personal use could change that: since 2014, 70 to 80% of cannabis seizures have been below that threshold.[@gi24] Judges may still classify someone as a trafficker on other circumstances, and studies cited by analysts find that people from racially discriminated groups are more likely to be treated as traffickers by police.[@gi24]
There is no legal recreational supply for anyone, so a visitor has no lawful way to buy cannabis.[@anvisa] Whatever legal supply exists is medical, for patients with a prescription or registration.[@gv] The sources behind this profile describe no separate rule for visitors.[@anvisa]
The Traffic Code has two levels.[@ctbdrive] Driving under the influence of alcohol or any other psychoactive substance that causes dep … lied by ten and a 12-month suspension of the licence, and refusing a test brings the same.[@ctbdrive] It becomes a crime, with six months to three years' detention, only when the driver's psychomotor capacity is altered.[@ctbdrive] For alcohol the code sets a figure that proves this; for other substances it sets none, so proof rests on signs of impairment, a toxicology test, a clinical exam or witnesses.[@ctbdrive]
The African Roots of Marijuana Guillermo Garat — Paraguay, The cannabis breadbasket of the Southern Cone, TNI Drug Policy Briefing 46 (2016) Columbia Global Freedom of Expression — Prosecutor General v. President of the Republic (ADPF 187) Edward MacRae — The Religious Uses of Licit and Illicit Psychoactive Substances in a Branch of the Santo Daime Religion (Chacruna, 2022) Beatriz Labate and Kevin Feeney — O processo de regulamentação da ayahuasca no Brasil e na esfera internacional (Periferia, 2011) Jorge Emanuel Luz de Souza — Sonhos da diamba (EDUFBA/CETAD-UFBA, 2015) 9 unchanged
label Personal use up to 40 g (Supreme Court 2024) · treatment civil · term Personal use · note Administrative — seizure, warning or educational course; dealer indicia override, label Possession as trafficking (Law 11.343 article 33) · treatment criminal · term Trafficking · prison min 5 years · prison 15 years · note Gifts can qualify as trafficking
label Up to six female plants for personal use (Supreme Court 2024) · treatment civil · term Personal use · note Administrative infraction; plants seized; not a right to grow, label Unauthorised growing as trafficking (Law 11.343 article 33) · treatment criminal · term Unlicensed cultivation · prison min 5 years · prison 15 years, label Patient growing under court order · treatment legal · term Medical growing · note Individual or collective habeas corpus; 40 associations authorised in 2024
Adult use is decriminalised but not legal: up to 40 g or six female plants draws administrative measures, and there are no lawful sales.[@conectas,sechat] The path ran through the courts — the Planet Hemp jailing in 1997, the unanimous 2011 ruling that marching for legalisation is free expression, and the [2024 possession ruling](/history/brazil-supreme-court-2024/).
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No hemp exception operates: growing cannabis outside the medical and research rules is prohibited, and those rules are the only lawful route for low-THC plants.[@anvisa]
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Brazil's cannabis vocabulary is Central African — maconha and diamba are attributed to Angola's Kimbundu, carried with slavery — and their stories are traced in [maconha](/culture/language/maconha/) and [diamba](/culture/language/diamba/).[@duvall19] The street form is prensado, brick weed pressed for bulk transport: bricked Paraguayan cannabis expanded to Chile, Argentina and Uruguay and dominates Brazilian seizures, a supply chain described in [brick weed](/culture/traditions/brick-weed/).[@garat16] Protest takes the streets as the Marcha da Maconha, protected since the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on 15 June 2011 that article 287 must be read with free expression and assembly — history traced in [the march](/culture/traditions/global-marijuana-march/) and the [2011 ruling](/history/brazil-stf-marijuana-march-2011/).[@columbia11] Faith met the law in Acre, where one Santo Daime branch took cannabis as a second sacrament, Santa Maria, renaming every word so it would never be "a drug" — until the [1983 raid](/history/brazil-cinco-mil-raid-1983/) and official renunciation, a story told in [Santa Maria in Santo Daime](/culture/traditions/santa-maria-in-santo-daime/).[@macrae22,labate11] And in rural Maranhão, Saturday diamba circles passed a shared pipe with verses that prohibitionist doctors cited in 1918 to demand a ban, described in [the circles](/culture/traditions/the-diamba-circles/) with [his essay](/history/brazil-iglesias-diamba-essay-1918/).[@souza15]
duvall19, garat16, columbia11, macrae22, labate11, souza15