O antiproibicionismo de Salvador/BA: uma análise de suas características, organização, trajetórias e projetos entre 2013 e 2016

Abstract

There have always been limitations and prohibitions on the use of certain drugs. However, it is from the twentieth century that the creation of public policies that deal with the issue of drugs from a criminal and international perspective, characteristic of Contemporary Prohibitionism, is observed. These policies are supported by medical, legal, and political discourses and do not reach all substances in the same way. The War on Drugs justifies the use of force in social control from the creation of people inserted in the cycles of production, distribution and consumption of these substances as public enemies. Anti-prohibitionism arises, which consists of critics who want to denounce the sanitary-criminal-war management model of public policies on drugs in force. Antiprohibitionism also provides alternatives to current public policies on drugs, such as possible rules for regulating the processes of production and distribution of these substances and strategies to care for people who decide to consume them. There are people who act politically to bring about changes in current public drug policies. These people are called anti-prohibitionist agents and their actions make up the anti-prohibitionist project. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews between 2013 and 2016 were carried out with anti-prohibition agents in Salvador/BA in order to better understand the local anti-prohibitionist project. Thus, it was possible to analyze the organization of these people around this objective, their trajectories, their actions, etc., through the examination of established power relations. Thereby, one can understand the process of entering new anti-prohibitionist agents, the criminalization of the anti-prohibitionist project, their intersections and the establishment of leaderships and other aspects of how the reality is negotiated around the drugs issue.