The bad news for Brazil in the annual report by the UN-linked Drug Inspection Board (Jife), which gave the country positive grades in various areas of drug control and legislation, is that Brazilians have become the world’s number one consumers of amphetamines.
Amphetamines are mainly used by people who want to lose weight. According to Elisaldo Carlini, a member of Jife and the director of Brazilian Center for Information on Psychotropical Drugs (CEBRID), in the decade since 1996, consumption of amphetamines in Brazil rose 50%, going from slightly over 20 tons per year in 1996, to 30 tons per year today.
The Jife report says that marijuana remains the drug most consumed in Brazil. In spite of efforts by the government, it is grown in various regions of the country, mainly the North and Northeast.
As for cocaine, the report says Brazil is part of the South American cocaine route to the consumer markets in the US and Europe and has its own consumer market.
ABr