Brazil: STJ and Chamber of Deputies address drug trafficking laws

The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) has established five legal theses regarding the sentencing of drug trafficking offenses. These criteria govern how the nature and quantity of drugs are used in sentencing, specifically addressing the base penalty increase and the application of the privileged trafficking reduction. The court ruled that the nature and quantity of drugs must be evaluated together as an inseparable binomial, preferably during the third stage of sentencing to modulate the reduction fraction, unless the reduction is not applied.

Separately, the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission of the Chamber of Deputies approved a proposal to increase penalties for drug crimes committed through fraud or deception intended to shift responsibility to an innocent person. This measure aims to target practices such as switching luggage tags to transport narcotics in the names of unsuspecting passengers. The proposal, authored by Deputy Carlos Jordy, follows previous approval by the Public Security and Organized Crime Commission and will now proceed to the plenary.