A falência da “guerra às drogas”: uma perspectiva sobre a biopolítica da criminalização e as ferramentas de propagação da violência racial pelo Estado

Abstract

Drugs are a fundamental part of human culture and history, present in all parts of the globe for millennia as instruments of socialization, a perennial and adaptable cultural phenomenon. Over the last two centuries, these psychoactive substances had their social, economic and legal value expanded, while some of them were considered a fundamental problem of society. Although confronting this problem is declared to be the definitive solution to a large part of the violence and structural problems of society, a power structure inherited from colonialism is hidden behind this facade, whose projects of control, separation and subjugation are carried out daily through of the state apparatus, especially public security. Using Foucault's concepts of biopolitics and starting from a historical analysis of drugs in contemporary times, we seek to expose the formation of the prohibitionist paradigm, the negative consequences of repression and to evaluate, from experiences of foreign law, which less repressive alternative approaches can represent a solution to the violent police state in which Brazilian society finds itself. We face as a research problem the necessity to deconstruct a structure of racial/colonial violence that hides under the law enforcement. We used a vast bibliographic study on sociology, history, criminology and policy to approach the consequences of Prohibitionism on the brazilian drug policy from many angles, examining the compared experience with the objective of make a critic and build a scientific framework compatible with the results found in the scientific literature, which propose a political and legal change to a more flexible paradigm, able to reduce damage and risks while adopt a more human posture over groups that have drugs as part of their daily lives.