Marijuana lobby gains traction in Congress with misleading rhetoric

The lobby in favor of marijuana legalization is gaining strength in the national Congress, relying on misleading rhetoric and billionaire interests. Using as a pretext the medicinal properties of Cannabis sativaassociations and corporations that want a broader legalization of marijuana in Brazil have gained space and influence in discussions in the Chamber and Senate.

The false narrative of these groups is based on a real problem: there are cases of rare diseases in which the use of cannabidiol – one of the hundreds of substances present in marijuana – may be the best therapeutic alternative, such as Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes . Experts and parliamentarians opposed to the legalization of marijuana have been proposing, for years, a reasonable middle ground: offering cannabidiol free of charge, through the SUS, to carriers of these rare diseases. In practice, this already happens through judicial decisions.

The marijuana lobby, however, is not satisfied with this alternative, and is pressing for a wide release of the cultivation and commercialization of marijuana. Cannabis sativa in Brazil. The alleged purpose is always the medicinal potential of the plant. The concept of “medicinal” held by some of the lobbyists, however, is quite broad.

On the last 23rd, for example, participants in a public hearing in the Chamber defended the legalization of the medicinal use of all substances derived from marijuana. They also supported the release of planting done by the users themselves. A psychologist from a pro-cannabis said THC, the substance responsible for marijuana’s hallucinogenic effects, “cannot be vilified.”

In April, a public hearing in the Senate had similar speeches. There were those who defended the prescription of products derived from cannabis for patients with anxiety, depression and insomnia.

‘Medical marijuana’ is false narrative, experts say

For the president of Cruz Azul in Brazil, Rolf Hartmann, this type of discourse composes a false narrative proclaimed by a lobby that, in several international experiences, starts talking about medicinal properties to gradually expand its scope.

“One of the pretexts of this lobby is medical marijuana, which does not exist. There are medicines that are made from one of the substances in marijuana. There is a medicine that you make from the venom of the jararaca, but that is not why someone is going to create one jararaca at home or give the poison directly to your child. What is not being observed is the due scientific process”, criticizes Hartmann. “Growing marijuana indoors cannot be part of a medical treatment, it is not scientific. It is clear, with this type of speech, which seems like a pretext, because for other types of substances we would not have this lobby for approval before presented a solution following due scientific process.”

Federal prosecutor Lucas Gualtieri, coordinator of the Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco) of the Federal Public Ministry in Minas Gerais (MPF-MG), says that lobbyists “use the medicinal property of cannabidiol to legitimize their own discourse and break possible resistance to marijuana”. “They say: ‘look, legalization will allow the treatment of children with seizures, of several people with serious health problems. Why are you against it?’. It ends up serving more as an argument to hide the real intention, which is broad legalization”, he comments.

It would also be a contradiction, points out Gualtieri, that the medicinal properties of the plant would justify its home cultivation. “What they are wanting is to replace the pharmaceutical industry. It makes no sense to say about a certain drug that I want to use, but I don’t have the money to buy it, that I can manufacture it – that is, ask for authorization from the State so that I can replace it. the pharmaceutical industry, which had to submit a series of tests and confirmations, follow a series of rules and protocols for the production of that medicine. Well, how many lawsuits do we have, pending in Brazil, that claim the cost of high-cost medicines? Why, in this situation, not use the same path? Why ask for a broad authorization from the State to plant the raw material of that medicine? I don’t see any logical sense in that”, he says.

For lawyer Roberto Lasserre, national coordinator of the Brazil Without Drugs Movement, “medical marijuana does not exist”. “When you manufacture a medicine, you extract a substance in the laboratory or else you take a molecule from nature within a structure – in this case, a plant – and transform that, through technical modifications, into a medicine. With marijuana, no it could be different. You have up to 480 substances, and of those 480 substances, only one, just one, has some kind of therapeutic effect – and even then, not for all diseases, as they want to promote”, he says.

Senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) also considers that the idea of ​​”medical marijuana” is part of a false narrative. “I fear that the final objective is to release the recreational use of marijuana, as has been done in several countries such as Uruguay, Holland and the United States, nations that suffer from the increase in trafficking, consumption and violence”, he says.

Lobby relies on billionaire interests

The pro-marijuana discourse infiltrated the Legislature mainly after the passage of the bill (PL) 399 of 2015. Originally, the proposal was only intended to authorize the commercialization of medicines with “extracts, substrates, or parts of the plant called Cannabis sativa“. However, a substitute for this PL approved in 2021 by a special commission of the Chamber added a series of devices on planting, processing, research, transport and commercialization of marijuana in Brazil, authorizing, among other things, the home cultivation of the plant.

In recent years, NGOs and associations that promote the legalization of marijuana in Brazil have multiplied, especially those that claim to defend the medicinal properties of the plant. Its teams are made up of specialists from different areas, such as psychologists, doctors, lawyers, agronomists and information technology professionals. Many of them have gone to Congress to lobby.

These entities do not usually disclose their funders, but there are a large number of companies linked to the marijuana universe that, legally or illegally, already make money in Brazil and are interested in promoting medical marijuana. A few days ago, a laboratory that develops drugs based on cannabis received a financing of 15 million from Itaú bank. Furthermore, the international marijuana market sees great potential in Brazil, as already shown by a report by People’s Gazette.

“There are many foreign companies that are interested and that have branches in Brazil, and that are already glimpsing a huge market. Even today, on the internet, if you search about cannabishow to plant cannabis, there are already companies that are actually advertising on social networks. They just aren’t doing it on television and radio because, in fact, it’s totally prohibited. But, in the networks, there are companies that are already dealing with cannabis in Brazil as a legalized drug, although it continues to be a proscribed drug. It certainly has external financing and it has internal financing from companies that are already wanting to develop this market in Brazil”, comments Lasserre.

Senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) says that the pro-marijuana lobby in Congress is influenced by local and international actors. “This class represents foreign and national companies that aim to profit, regardless of personal tragedies, from the trade of cannabismaking use of, for this, even the suffering of entire families.”

At the same time that this is happening in the Legislative, the lobbyists of the cannabis they rely, to influence public opinion, on the help of the media, which, for the most part, are in favor of a wide release of marijuana. One of the reasons for this may be the high rate of substance use among communicators compared to other professionals. There are no statistics released on the subject in Brazil, but in the United States, a 2018 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) carried out in the state of Colorado found that the professional area of ​​arts, media and entertainment had, proportionally , the second largest number of marijuana users, behind only lodging and food services.

In recent years, companies in the cannabis have published statistics on the high potential of the marijuana market in Brazil in the media. For Lasserre, one must look skeptically at these numbers, which are inflated. The market, according to him, is not small, but it tends to be overestimated by the interest in promoting marijuana as a profitable product.

“I have not the slightest doubt that these are inflated numbers. They certainly reach the billions, but what is not considered is the social cost that this will bring. And this is not just in relation to the issue of addiction. I’m talking about social costs in relation to the issue of public safety. We see that Uruguay had an increase in violence, the Netherlands had an increase in violence. There is the health problem. How many doctors will have to be hired, how many nursing posts will have to be open? Regarding the INSS issue, how many people will be removed from work [por causa da maconha] in the productive moment of your life? The issue is much more than just the collection. What is the social cost of all this?” he asks.