The dead and wounded in the “war on drugs”: A criticism of the prohibitionist paradigm

Abstract

The starting point of the criticism of prohibitionism, the global hegemonic paradigm of drug policies, was the emergency of the concept of “drugs” itself in an international level approximately a century ago. The motivations, strategies, and developments of this paradigm will be analyzed considering its two pillars: medicalization and criminalization (both associated with the moral issues deeply rooted in the societies that have adopted it).The present study focuses on the particularities of the Brazilian process, starting from the implementation of prohibitionism in the early twentieth centuryto the current “war on drugs”, which was launched in the 1960s. Over the course of time, from the 1970s onwards, dissonant voices from different fields of knowledge and political action have been raised. The unveil of the undeclared objectives of the “war on drugs” (which have made this war victorious after all) and the development of alternative public policies by these actors have generated important tensions and created gaps in the current drug policy.