Foundation Allowed to Release Drug Use Study Censored by the Government

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU), the Ministry of Justice and Public Security and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ) have agreed to release a study on drug use by Brazilians that cost R$7 million (US$1.8 million) and had been censored by the federal government.

The study, which is now available on the Internet, points out that there is no drug use epidemic in Brazil. The federal government disagrees with this result.

The federal government had banned the disclosure of this study developed by Fiocruz in May. According to the Ministry of Justice, the research methods used did not meet all of the requirements set out in the public notice. Fiocruz disagrees and states that it complied with all the proposed requirements.

The preliminary agreement for the study’s disclosure provides that “the contents of the study’s final report, the executive summary and the additions produced by Fiocruz will be disclosed to the public.”

According to the note released by the AGU and the Ministry of Justice, disclosing the contents of the final report is intended to promote transparency and access to scientific research data. The note further states that new debates will be held to determine whether Fiocruz has met all of the requirements set out in the public notice.

The agreement also states that the parties involved “have agreed to promote the publication of the study without making considerations, at this time, on the merits of compliance or lack thereof with the terms of the notice.”

Financed by the National Secretariat for Drug Policy (SENAD), a body under the Ministry of Justice, the study interviewed over 16,000 people. In total, 500 professionals from different areas — field interviewers, researchers in epidemiology and statistics — took part in the study, conducted between 2014 and 2017.

The study’s budget, entitled “Third national survey on drug use by the Brazilian population”, was R$8 million. Fiocruz reported that it spent R$7 million and returned R$1 million to the government.

The Minister of Citizenship, Osmar Terra, has been challenging the study’s findings, which should have been released in 2017. At the beginning of May, in an interview with GloboNews, he questioned Fiocruz’s credibility.

“Fiocruz has a bias to defend the liberalization of drugs. Fiocruz has been working for many years to prove that drug use is not an issue. And Fiocruz has a prominent role in the research on vaccines and medicines. But, unfortunately, in the field of drug research, it is entirely committed to liberalization, wanting to show that there is no epidemic,” he said.

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