 Hello, good afternoon. I'm Peter Sharoshi from Drug Reporter. Today we are here at the International Harm Reduction Conference Porto, Portugal and we will talk about drug policies in Brazil and how the current political changes in Brazil affected the lives of people who use drugs and their human rights. I have two or three guest speakers here with me today. Frances Connetto from Fuglou's Health Research Institute, Leon Garcia from Sao Paulo Community Addiction Center and Cristiano Marona from also from Sao Paulo from the Brazilian drug policy platform. So my first question is, I mean people outside of Brazil know that there was a change of government change of president. You have a new president Bolsonaro. Can you explain us how this affected drug policies in general and also how it affects harm reduction services? Maybe we can start with you, Cristiano. Yes, President Bolsonaro decided to ban harm reduction from the official Brazilian drug policy because he understands that the abstinence is the only goal that should be reached in a drug treatment for people who have problems with drugs. We are very concerned about that because harm reduction has more than 30 years in Brazil with very good results and this decision will affect people who works in the ground, people who needs access to harm reduction and we are calling the international community to spread our concern and fight with us to maintain harm reduction as a public official policy. I would add that decisions President Bolsonaro already took will channel resources, funds, money, to abstinence only services. So services like the service I work in, an addiction community clinic, hundreds of addiction community clinics in Brazil, hundreds of outreach teams working with homeless people, working on the prevention of HIV, of HCV, working also with other harm reduction measures, all these services tend to have less money and money will be channeled to abstinence only services. So I think it's very important to highlight our moments of celebrating the 30 years of the first actions of harm reduction that we started with exchange program, but have changed and became a very particular, singular way of doing harm reduction with the specificities we have in Brazil. So it's very important that we understand that harm reduction is not opposed to abstinence, of course. It's based on the idea that you can't deny health as a right to everyone, even the ones who can't or won't stop using drugs. So it's very important to keep policy that reaches all the people that might need some kind of support. I suppose the situation was not ideal even before Bolsonaro in Brazil. So can you also describe the situation especially like maybe a few words about the drug scene in Brazil? Like what kind of drugs are used by people and what are those drugs which generate the most problems because of poverty and because of social reasons and how it's connected to in general, like how it's connected to marginalization and what is the role of police in all this? Well, the most widely used drug in Brazil is a legal drug, is alcohol, but we don't speak about alcohol because public health hasn't been the main concern of government lastly. So in terms of illegal drugs, we still have drug users criminalized in Brazil. So this is a very serious issue. Drug users are criminalized. They cannot be sent to jail, but they are still criminalized. We can see in Brazil that crack cocaine has been the legal drug that has a most, the most impact on public health terms and the use of crack cocaine is connected with social vulnerability. So those who are suffering the most from crack cocaine are those who were already suffering the most in our society. The poor, the black, those living in the streets, those that have been imprisoned in life. So addressing drug problems in Brazil is also addressing inequality, poverty and social justice. It's very important, I believe, to highlight how we've been on an unfinished job in Brazil of overcoming very high inequality and denial of rights. So there's been a construction since the end of the dictatorship in the 1980s of 30 years of building of course difficult and contradictory reform process, which has in the human rights field and in the health field built quite a substantial movement. So not to lose this is essential. And I think that we've never been, of course, as most developing countries in a great place, but we have achieved some things that they're worth maintaining and struggling for. Well, the drug law plays an important role in Brazil regarding the super incarceration process. Brazil today is the third largest inmate population in the world and one in three prisoners in Brazil are there because of the drug law. So the drug law in Brazil, the war on drugs in Brazil, results in violence, in corruption, in mass incarceration and in strengthening the organized crime. So our worries, well, we understand that the drug law should change. Brazil still criminalized drug possession for personal use. So I understand that Brazil is now at the middle age when we talk about drug policy. This morning we saw very disturbing images at the plenary session shown by one of your colleagues and they shown that actually the favelas in big cities in Brazil became kind of war zone. So people, innocent people are killed in fighting, but it's like it's going on for a while and it's very ineffective because it could not really reduce drug trafficking. So why do you think why people still believe that with this kind of measures, with this kind of weapons going there with arms, they can solve this problem? And why did they support still these policies? Do you have any hypothesis about this? Well, I think unfortunately Brazil has a tradition of criminalizing poor people and marginalized people. I can't even say minorities because black people are not a minority in Brazil. They are effectively a majority, but they have been criminalized since slavery and the war on drugs is very effective on providing a message that the public can understand without feeling that oh, I'm not a racist, but I think that people who use drugs and people who traffic drugs are not reliable. So this is this is why the war on drug continues, I think. We had to face a number of social issues and we started to do that. We had huge progress in terms of diminishing inequalities in Brazil in the last 10 or 15 years, but it's still unfinished work. We have to continue on that. And while we continue, we got to gain the hearts and minds of the people so people can understand that this criminalization of poverty won't solve our problems. Yeah, I think there are two dimensions. One is the structural racism that's very deep rooted, as Leon is saying, and this is for century, right? It's a and it's a thing that's so structural that the war on drugs kind of plays a role. And I think another thing is a very moral and religious way of thinking where somehow you need to find something that to Responsibilize for the products of inequality and exclusion. So the war on drugs kind of plays that the criminalization of drugs plays a little bit of that role. Yeah, and I would like to add and highlight the role of media of present Brazil. Actually, media helps to spread the wrong message, help to spread the stigma, help to normalize violence and police lethality. So we have a media that help people to not understand what is war on drugs and besides that we have a judicial system that protect the elite, the friends and criminalize the poverty. So in our prisons 70% are not white people. They are all poor people. I think in our prisons only 1% has superior degree. So in Brazil we have the criminal management of poverty through the criminal system. So please talk a little bit about how the international community can help you. So what what should governments do, maybe those governments who are more progressive on drugs, can they do something? We also have a populist leader called Viktor Orban in Hungary and I know that for example he doesn't really care about like statements coming from the UN or things and I'm sure Bolsonaro is not very similar in that. So what but how can how can the international community support you? Yes, I think Orban is a model for Bolsonaro. Both of them don't like the multilateralism don't want to obey United Nations guidelines and in our opinion we have to share what is happening in Brazil. So the international community can denounce and can help us to think in sanctions, especially in the human rights area. We understand that human rights are the the way out of this situation, but we really don't know exactly what to do. Well, I think we got a problem is that Bolsonaro was elected after all. So majority of Brazilians thought in in a certain moment that he was a solution to our problems. So we got a problem of talking to each other in Brazil now. It's a very radicalized environment. So the international community can help to talk to speak to Brazilians who have voted to Bolsonaro, voted for Bolsonaro and and help them understand what are the consequences of Bolsonaro's policies. So this is I think maybe the the most important issue because I agree that he won't be very he won't give very much attention to multilateral organisms or to what other governments say, but people in Brazil will listen to the message of the International Society and they can change their minds if they understand the consequences of what Bolsonaro is saying. So yeah, I think that the International Civil Society and the public health community, the human rights advocates do have a very important role at this point, even if you think about just helping people cope with the dismantling of public policies. And I think that it's very important that we understand how in these moments the international community is very helpful in many many ways. I think we should have to figure out the best ways that this can happen. But just to have the mobilization for and we're feeling that people are with us, let's say, so that's very important. I think that And the final my final question is like now more and more countries are turning into this populistic authoritarianism and as you mentioned that these these leaders are elected sometimes after that it's very hard to get rid of them democratically, but first of all they they are supported with public majority. So what are your tactics inside of the country in advocacy? So because I see some activists saying that now we have to keep a low profile, not so, you know, provoke the attacks from the governments, others are more confronting with the government. What what tactics would you pursue in in your work? I think we we got to look at the bigger picture because this phenomena of neo-fascist leaders being elected around the world, it has to do with the rise in inequality and inequality has been rising in all countries, almost all countries in the last 20 years. It also has to do with the financial crisis of 2008 that led to fiscal to a fiscal crisis, less money, dismantlement of welfare state or in countries like ours. We don't we are still constructing our welfare state. So if we don't treat human rights and we include human rights of people who use drug inside that context of of the economic and the social crisis and the need for strong states, strong welfare states, I think we will be too much isolated. So we must get together with all other vulnerable groups of people defending human rights and never forget the political agenda, the economic agenda, because this is our agenda too. It's not as strictly human rights. Human rights are connected to to equality, to economic equality and to participation in politics. We have to value politics. We cannot attack politics. Politics is the only way to we can overcome that. So be it through political parties, NGOs, civil movements, civil disobedience in some cases it will be needed. So we got to find an array of tactics but never give up traditional political party. That is my opinion. I think that we are a point where the value of hundreds of years of civilizatory gain and understanding and science. I mean we were at the point not that long ago where we could question the paradigm of science and now we're back to just saying well the earth is not flat. So you know it's that's where. So it's a very weird time where you have to struggle for some basic common understanding of what humanity has evolved. And I think that that's very important at this point. And I agree with the OME. There's gonna we need to reorganize understanding that politics is very important. People and politics are the same thing. I mean people are political beings and this is not bad. The way that we're doing politics maybe has to evolve to something different, but we have to affirm that people are politics. And just two final points. 130 years ago Brazil was a slave country. We have official slavery as a reality. And today we we face the consequence of this process. We are still segregating black people. They are on the worst places and works in everywhere. And to do that we have to change the fiscal system in Brazil. Brazil takes heaven for rich people. But this issue is not on the agenda because rich people doesn't want to talk about that. The press, the media doesn't talk about that. They only talk about reforming the providentiary system, which will make people more poor than they are now. So what we need in Brazil is more citizenship. We have a lack of citizenship and we as civil society we should work to make citizenship real in Brazil for everybody. Okay, Cristiano Leon, Francisco, thank you so much for being with me and thank you for those who watched us and please be aware that we are watching you and you are not alone. So we try to support you from the distance. Thank you.