Thiago Rodrigues

Prohibition and the War on Drugs in the Americas: An Analytical Approach

In the beginning of the twentieth century, a national and international process drove a great amount of psychoactive drugs into illegality. The historical movement towards the criminalization of the production, trade, and use of those drugs is a complex articulation between social practices and security moves made by many states worldwide. In the Americas, it is possible to follow this by studying how moral perspectives connected with emerging technologies of government. This chapter aims to present an analytical framework that addresses the “problematization” and the “securitization” of psychoactive drugs in the Americas, i.e., to show how some drugs became moral, social health, and security “problems” demanding security measures by the states. The proposed framework has five interconnected levels: the moral/social practices level, the public health level, the public security level, the national security level, and the international security level. Our hypothesis is that each one of the American nations that developed internal prohibitionist regimes has faced a singular equilibrium between these five analytical levels. Alongside the general exposition of the framework, we briefly present the historical cases of United States, Brazil, and Mexico in order to indicate how we conceive of what might be possible applications of our analytical suggestions.

Brazilian Drug Policy: Tension Between Repression and Alternatives

Policies toward illicit drugs have attained the utmost relevance in the debate pervading all levels of Brazilian society. Propositions for relaxation of traditional, coercive legislation share the landscape with others aimed at maintaining and deepening prohibitionism and its corollaries. This chapter describes the narratives produced in the history of Brazil’s prohibitionism, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the current times, and its unfolding juridical backdrop. Among other possible repercussions, Brazil’s domestic politics and its connections with international prohibitionism, inclusive of the War on Drugs, are presented, as are the political associations, progressive and conservative, that are currently at play there. The paradoxes and tensions that currently pervade Brazil’s policies toward the drug issue are underscored. These policies oscillate between blunt, military support for the War on Drugs, the moral persecution of users and addicts, and support for controversial treatment campaigns, to reformist propositions like those carried out in other Latin American countries with the support of social movements, such as the proposal to regulate the medicinal or recreational use of cannabis. The authors wrap up the chapter by addressing the different political traditions and moral views that inform these opposing views, and try to understand the wider implications of contemporary changes to Prohibition at a global scale.

Brazil, Pacification and Major Events: Forging an “Ambience of Security” in Rio

espanolThis paper seeks to analyze the reshaping of the state security device in Brazil justified by the challenge of hosting the World Cup and the Olympic Games. The advent of these events ignited security programs designed to face possible threats and also the strengthening of law enforcement capability. This security device, in a Foucauldian perspective, should be seen as a complex articulation between social practices around security, national securitization processes and new tactics of government over conducts, spaces and flows connected with transterritorial security strategies. EnglishEste articulo busca analizar la remodelacion del dispositivo de seguridad estatal en Brasil justificado por el desafio de ser sede del Mundial y los Juegos Olimpicos. El advenimiento de estos eventos impulso los programas de seguridad disenados para enfrentar posibles amenazas y el fortalecimiento de la capacidad de aplicar la ley. Este dispositivo de seguridad, desde una perspectiva Foucaultiana, deberia ser visto como una articulacion compleja entre practicas sociales en torno a la seguridad, procesos nacionales de securitizacion y nuevas tacticas de gobierno sobre conductas, espacios y flujos conectados con estrategias de seguridad transterritoriales.

Introduction: Drugs and Politics in the Americas: A Laboratory for Analysis

It has become a truism that drug prohibitionism is a failure. The 100-year history of the repression against the production, trade, and consumption of a certain number of psychoactive drugs has not reached its declared goals. Those drugs that preoccupied and mobilized the pioneer prohibitionists at the dawn of the twentieth century are today just a fraction of the great amount of illegal substances crossing transborder routes and being used today. Since the initial national antidrug laws and the first international treaties, the variety, quantity, and potency of available illegal drugs has increased; the number of criminal organizations dedicated to this potent market has increased; and multiple levels of violence has spread worldwide from the Andean heights to the streets and slums of the world’s most crowded metropolises.