Global Marijuana March

The Global Marijuana March (GMM) is an annual rally held at different locations across the planet. It refers to cannabis-related events that occur on the first Saturday in May, or thereabouts, and may include marches, meetings, rallies, raves, concerts, festivals and information tables.

The Global Marijuana March also goes by the name of the Million Marijuana March (MMM). It began in 1999. Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in over 829 different cities in 72 countries worldwide since 1999. There are local names for the event too. Such as: World Cannabis Day, Cannabis Liberation Day, Global Space Odyssey, Ganja Day, J Day, Million Blunts March, etc..

The Global Marijuana March is a celebration embracing cannabis culture. Participants unite to discuss, promote, entertain and educate both consumers and non-consumers alike.

On June 15, 2011, the eight ministers of Brazil's Supreme Court (STF) that participated in the trial were unanimous in free demonstrations for the legalization of drugs, such as the Marcha da Maconha (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmaʁʃɐ da mɐˈkõȷ̃ɐ], Marijuana Walk) in Brazil, in which they decided that the demonstrations are an exercise of freedom of expression and not incitement to crime, as argued judges who have banned the march in the past. The discussion of the Marcha da Maconha reached the Supreme Court in June 2009 when the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic Deborah Duprat filed the claim of breach of fundamental precept, ADPF 187. In the lawsuit, the attorney states that the legal prohibition of the demonstrations in favor of marijuana and other narcotics have been based on misinterpretation of the Criminal Code. She said that it is "wrong" to say that the realization of these events are an "apology to crime".

Marijuana was brought to Brazil by its African slaves, and with the eugenic positivist intellectual and political status quo of the Western civilization in the early 20th century, its use was deemed as a signal of decadence by its stigmatized use as a recreational drug of the poor, the rural people and the Afro-Brazilian. Its association with the counterculture and left-wing youths during the highly anti-Communist military dictatorship, initially a strong ally of the United States' government, fortified its negative perceptions both by the authorities and the masses. Nevertheless, since the neoliberal centre-right government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994–2002), position strengthened in the so-called Era Lula (2003–2010), individual marijuana use by adults started to have no major importance to police and government instances – though not, ironically (since the country has major crime problems with drug dealers), its domestic cultivation for own consumption. One can see and smell people smoking the so-called maconha openly in Brazil's Centre-Southern half as well as in the Northeastern states, and recreational use of cannabis in private became more accepted among large sectors of the middle classes since the early 1990s. The academic milieu is no exception and, today, a sizeable minority of Brazilian University lecturers, students and researchers smoke marijuana.

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