Dinâmicas da guerra às drogas e a particularidade nordestina

Abstract

The prohibition can be understood as the set of conventions and legislations that guide the states actions about certain drugs, assumed here, as illicit psychoactive substances. However, it goes beyond that, as it changes other possible ways of dealing with those substances, turning them essentially negative to society. The motivations for its consolidation present various nuances that cross politics, economy and morality. Even though the United States are the responsible for the militarization side of prohibition, with the entitled “war on drugs”, the national legislations are the responsible for turning this ideology a rare consensual case around the world, with exceptions not ignored by the resistance and socio-historical correlations of each country. The reach of the prohibition policies has been constantly questioned, as the expansion of the illicit drugs market has not responded to its central aims. Nonetheless, these policies are constituted as a volatile way to criminalize certain social groups and intensify criminal control over the same groups. Beyond the coercive state forces, other phenomenon intertwines to this matter, that is: the dispute among controllers over market territory, passage and circulation of drugs. In 2017, it was registered an exponential growth of homicide in the Northeast region, which was justified with the reshaping of the illicit drugs market in Brazil. Taking this delineation into consideration, this research focus in analyzing the specific case of the Northeast in regard to the “war on drugs” dynamics. For that, the bibliographic research done as an investigation strategy aims to contextualize the prohibition policy and its expressions in the national territory, trying to summarize the answers to the “war on drugs” as tools for the capital reproduction and expansion, presenting then, the Northeast case phenomenon. Also, as a methodology strategy, it was performed a document research that prioritize source and data analyses in “Atlas da Violência” and “Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública” from 2017 to 2022. These documents were chosen for their consolidation of national data for interested parties concerned about violence and crime matters, being the illicit drugs market dynamics associated with this phenomenon, specially, when focusing on this specific time frame. In the regional case, it can be mentioned the strategic geopolitical position for international transactions; the differences on social indicators and the perpetual inequalities, that are visible in multiple expressions of social matters; the increasing police and punishment; the homicide of young people; as well as the territory collectives created for the dispute and defense of markets and drug circulation in their territory.