cannabisnews.com: Brazil TV host's Candor Stirs Marijuana Debate 





Brazil TV host's Candor Stirs Marijuana Debate 
Posted by FoM on November 20, 2001 at 14:54:00 PT
By Reuters
Source: Reuters
A popular Brazilian television host who was fired for admitting she occasionally smoked marijuana was unrepentant on Tuesday, saying she was not a criminal as her dismissal reignited national debate on pot laws.     Sonia Francine, Brazil's top female soccer commentator and a former MTV presenter, was fired late Monday by publicly funded TV Cultura, which said it could not allow one of its employees to promote illegal acts. Francine, popularly known as Soninha, hosted a talk show geared at adolescents. 
 She and three other Brazilians appeared on the cover of news magazine Epoca this weekend and billboard advertisements across the country beside the headline ''I Smoke Marijuana.'' The cover story highlighted the recreational use of pot among professionals and Brazilians' sometimes conservative attitudes toward its use.    ''I am not a pothead, I am the same person I was before,'' the 34-year-old mother of three said on Tuesday on a talk show.    ''But the fact that a person consumes a substance should not turn that person into a criminal, even if that substance is bad for them or is bad for their health,'' said Francine, who says she smokes very little, usually at parties or friends' homes.    Marijuana use is illegal in Brazil although experts say it is becoming more common, especially among adolescents.    According to an estimate by the Brazilian government cited in a U.N. report on world drug use, 7.7 percent of Brazilians use cannabis, compared to 9 percent in the United Kingdom and 8.9 percent in the United States.    Other magazines have also recently run stories on marijuana use, including one in the weekly Veja entitled ''My dad smokes grass with me,'' and another in which a Sao Paulo city official called for debate on the medicinal use of cannabis.    Meanwhile, as Francine's plight became the focus of debate on daytime talk shows and spot polls, experts said one problem in dealing with marijuana use was the country's strict 1976 law that adheres to a stricter U.S. model instead of a more liberal stance like the Netherlands or Portugal, which have decriminalized personal use.    ''Brazil is moving in the opposite direction of the modern approaches,'' said Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's first drug czar who now heads a crime research center in Sao Paulo. ``What predominates is prohibition and bad information.'' Sao Paulo, Brazil Newshawk: puff_tuffSource: ReutersPublished: November 20, 2001 Copyright: 2001 Reuters LimitedRelated Articles:Leaders Debate Legalization of Drugs http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11356.shtmlWorld Drug Report 2000 http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8411.shtmlCannabisNews - Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #10 posted by sudaca on November 21, 2001 at 08:55:30 PT
reminds me..
todo el mundo fuma marihuana
menos yo
todo el mundo fuma marihuana
menos yo
pero me los cago a todos..
la vendo yothe chorus of that song ..translate that.. Everyone in the world is on the road to legalizing, except the country where the profiteers have a stake in keeping it illegal
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Comment #9 posted by E_Johnson on November 21, 2001 at 00:11:43 PT
Enthusiasm and its consequences
The Bush administration was so enthusiastic about stating their position in the world so strongly and unilaterally.Tear up the Kyoto treaty, here comes the missile defense you Eurohippies and former Communists, damn the neighbors and allies and full speed ahead into Americaland, the only country in the world.Get a strong hardline drug war team and close down medical marijuana in California.Oops, what went wrong? Suddenly the British police want marijuana cafes. People are rushing to open them and rushing to reopen them. And where is John Walters? Are they hiding Walters from Democrats in the same vault where they hide Dick Cheney from terrorists?The medical marijuana raids were so objectionable that they have lifted the medical marijuana issue itself from being something that Democrats were afraid to touch into something that Democrats can use to point out the hardline moral hypocrisy of the Republican Bush administration.And now even certifiable Republicans agree that we can't punish the Dutch.The world as the Bush administration so enthusiastically planned it is falling apart.
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Comment #8 posted by goneposthole on November 20, 2001 at 20:50:15 PT
I did it again
More laughter, please. "ends with confusion" should read "ends with completion."Doggone it anyhow.
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Comment #7 posted by goneposthole on November 20, 2001 at 20:30:03 PT
criminy sakes
Oh, I guess I was making it confusing. The 'ends with confusion' didn't read right and is not what I intended to convey. Go ahead and laugh and chortle until you snort. Now, I'm in a deep hole and I'll dig myself deeper.Maybe it is better if it reads: "Intelligent thought and behavior is problem solving and completion."Give me a break, a reefer break. Forgive me, too.
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Comment #6 posted by goneposthole on November 20, 2001 at 20:05:16 PT
Intelligent thought and intelligent behavior
begins with problem solving and ends with completion. Two vital criteria for intelligence to be just that and nothing else.All problem solving is shifting the center of orientation of ocular fixation. It is as simple as that.With the knowledge that the US Government has become a paper tiger because of the war on drugs, the wise leaders of other nations are looking the other way. Problem solved, job done. 
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on November 20, 2001 at 18:09:04 PT:
"Prague Spring"...without tanks
In 1968, when the brutal geriatrics running the Soviet Union thought that Czechoslovakia was going to break away from Soviet domination through practicing what they called their 'socialism with a human face', they crushed the non-rebellion with tanks. In doing so, they ripped the poorly constructed happy face mask from their visage and showed the world once more that maintaining naked, raw power was their true motivation.But where are those same dinosaurs, now? In history's boneyard...where they belonged. And their ideology with them.Of couse, it took a while for that to happen. But happen it did. And the end did indeed come with shocking speed. I remember the Berlin Wall coming down, Rumania violently throwing off Communist rule, and the Russian military, fed up at last, turning their tanks around and defending the Russian White House, ending the attempted coup by hard liners.The DrugWarriors, for all that they are doing now, closing MMJ clinics and stealing patient records for later use in prosecution, think they are having the last laugh. No doubt the Russian hard liners thought the same thing...until they were arrested. As some of you know, I try to keep up with things at DEAWatch, the principal mouthpiece of disgruntled agents. There has not been a single word about what has been happening in other countries going decrim. Especially deafening is the silence concerning the rapid change you are seeing in Great Britain. Not a roar, not a squeak, not groan. Nothing. This is especially odd because it is the police there who have joined in the chorus of people fed up with de facto Yankee fascism masquerading as moral proctoring. They to want change the drug laws, and they want it done now. And woe betide the dunderheaded Member of Parliament who can't get the hint; they are about to find out why it's a good idea to establish wind direction before relieving themselves. The writing is on the wall, in neon red block letters 3 stories tall: the world is turning it's back on the American War on Drugs. If America doesn't want to find out exactly how costly a modern-day isolationaism could be, it is going to have to change.Or ask the Soviet Union to move over; the boneyard may soon have a new tenant. 
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Comment #4 posted by FoM on November 20, 2001 at 15:37:15 PT
Hope
When The World Trade Center tragedy happened I really thought that it was all over for all of us. There would be no hope anymore. We've watched our civil liberties not just taken away but snatched right out of our hands. Now after a little over two months I am beginning to hope again. That's a good feeling.
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Comment #3 posted by null on November 20, 2001 at 15:27:04 PT
broken 'r' key??
In the interests of proper grammer make that: Talk to your families, my friends! ;)
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Comment #2 posted by null on November 20, 2001 at 15:19:52 PT
debates everywhere
Debates seem to be sparking everywhere. I believe Lehder said in another thread The toothpaste is WAY out of the tube! Amen to that! :) The Netherlands and Portugual decriminalized pot.
The U.K. and Canada are seriously looking at it.
Jamaica has been considering it but used to fear sanctions from the U.S. certification program. But that program has been suspended for at least one year in order to help wage to War on Terror.
California is about to come to blows with the Federal government over states rights in regards to medical marijuana.The tide HAS turned. While the first gains were painfully slow in coming the momentum will increase. Legalisation will seem to come in a blinding flash - globally.Everyone must spread the FACTS about marijuanna. We all must talk to our families and friends about marijuanna. They must know how much more benign marijuana is compared to alcohol or cigarettes. They must know that if they believe in jail terms for marijuana users they believe in sending you and me to jail! Talk to you family. Talk to you family. Talk to you family. It might be frightening, but it will be better for us all if you do. I know it scared me to do it after I was arrested for possesion but it turned out to be a good thing. As a matter of fact, some of them - ones I never would have suspected - admitted to me that they had smoked it! Talk to you family, my friends! 
FACTS about marijuana
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Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo MD on November 20, 2001 at 15:15:41 PT:
Bucking the Trend
There is a long history of cannabis use in Brazil, and it is a common part of the folk medicine in the country for a wide variety of uses.I applaud the bravery of the people involved to buck the trend and speak out as they believe. More of that attitude will help to change the laws all over the world.
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