BRITO NETO, José de Araújo.; LEMOS, Flávia Cristina Silveira.; GALINDO, Dolores Cristina Gomes.; FERLA, Alcindo Antônio.; CÔRREA, Michelle Ribeiro.
Resumo:
This paper offers a theoretical analysis of law and norm in the definition of Brazil’s
prohibitionist drug policy in recent decades. The central argument advances that drug
policies have been based on a prohibitionist perspective. At the core of this stance of
legal prohibition, repressive tactics gained social acceptance and were inscribed in a
plan towards a normalizing judicial sovereignty. Law and order movements increasingly
intercrossed and instituted the criminalization of drug use and the drug trade—
particularly for those deemed illegal—by means of an intricate field of
governmentalities which resulted in a carceral criminal policy and a medicalized view
of legal drug use, including psychotropics. In parallel, a set of discursive and power
practices operated jointly to define through a complex system of classification what
constitutes a drug and which drugs are to be considered legal or illegal.
