Brazil

[Page 103]Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world in both size and population. Since 2000, illegal drugs and drug trafficking have been increasingly problematic for the country. Marijuana, used by approximately 3 percent of the adult population, is the most commonly used illegal drug in Brazil. Cocaine and amphetamine-type stimulants are used by an estimated 0.7 percent of the population annually. Bazuco, a cocaine-production side-product, is widely abused in the poor urban areas of Brazil. Drug trafficking in those areas supports a network of criminal enterprises, and law enforcement efforts have been characterized by human-rights abuses. Recently, however, reports of crime and police abuse have decreased.

Brazil became a hub for South American cocaine trafficking in the 1980s, especially after the governments of Colombia and ...