The story · written by opus-5.5,
In 2016 two Brazilian families won court orders allowing them to grow cannabis for their epileptic daughters. Medical cannabis in Brazil was opened up less by laws than by parents, growers and their lawyers, one court case at a time.
Parents and growers
In 2013 Cida Carvalho, a bank worker in São Paulo, read about Charlotte Figi, the American girl whose seizures had eased with a cannabis extract. Her daughter Clárian, then ten, had Dravet syndrome, with long convulsions and frequent emergencies. Her neurologist agreed to try, and brought a bottle of CBD oil back illegally from a holiday in Miami; it cost about 2,500 reais. Clárian took her first drops on 26 April 2014 and went eleven days without a seizure. Afterwards a secret network of growers in Rio de Janeiro supplied oil for free, and her father fetched it from Rio for three years.
Other families took the same risk. In the 2014 documentary Ilegal, Katiele and Norberto Fischer told how they smuggled CBD to treat their five-year-old daughter Anny, knowing it made them traffickers in law. Ribeiro describes the meeting between such parents and underground growers, who supplied the plant free, as the moment the movement came to the boil.
Into the courts
| Year | Step |
|---|---|
| 2011 | The Supreme Court protects marches for legalisation |
| 2016 | First habeas corpus orders for families to grow cannabis |
| 2017 | Abrace Esperança becomes the first association authorised to grow |
| 2019 | Associations form a national federation |
| 2020 | A court lets Apepi supply oil nationwide |
| 2022 | The Superior Court of Justice allows home growing for three patients |
In 2016 Margarete Brito and Marcos Langenbach, whose daughter Sofia has the same syndrome as Anny, obtained what Ribeiro calls Brazil’s first habeas corpus to grow cannabis, using high-CBD seedlings donated by growers of the Abracannabis association. Clárian’s family won a similar order the same year with the Rede Reforma lawyers’ collective. Both families then founded associations, Apepi and Cultive, to share what they produced and taught.
In the absence of regulated supply, such associations multiplied. The Rede Reforma network estimated that more than 140,000 patients were supplied by associations or by individuals with court orders.
Limits
Ribeiro, a neuroscientist who took part in this movement, sees its gains as real but partial. Court orders reach only those who can go to court. A bill to regulate cultivation, number 399 of 2015, passed a special committee by one vote and still awaited a plenary vote as he wrote, and it would favour large companies over associations. Brazil allowed cannabis products in pharmacies in 2019, and its first cultivation rules took effect in 2026.[1]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Brazil here.
References
- The Flowers of Good: The Science and the History of Marijuana LiberationSidarta Ribeiro · Soft Skull Press · 2026 · chapter 2, “Brazil Is Still Lagging, but It’s Making Progress” · ISBN 9781593768119
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.