Rationality and legitimacy of the policy of repression in drug trafficking: a necessary provocation

Abstract

This article discusses the failure of the current policy for the so called "illicit drugs". There is more taboo based on sanitary and medical assumptions mixed with moral precepts and prejudices about the danger of drug addiction than real knowledge and efficient actions. Evidences show that treating drug intake and drug trade as a police case, as a crime, or even as a conduct that is decriminalized by the consumer whereas the drug dealers are overpenalized, stigmatized and considered demoniac persons do not contribute to reduce consumption nor to create a world free of drugs, as desired by the United Nations. The "war on drugs" led by the United States of America, besides wasting great amounts of public money and thousands of human lives year after year, does not take the human dignity into account. Rationality is absent and the legitimacy of such policy is damaged in view of authority crises, repression-generated violence, corruption and overcrowded prisons. These are menaces to the Democratic State of Law and we fear that the Brazilian State will repeat the tragedy of Canudos if the Army enters the war on drugs.