TITLE:
Decriminalization of Drugs: An Alternative to Decrease Brazilian Violence
AUTHORS:
Maria Stela Grossi Porto, Welliton Caixeta Maciel
KEYWORDS:
Violence; Drug and Weapon Trafficking; Decriminalization of Drugs; Public Safety; Public Polices of Health
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Medical Psychology,
Vol.3 No.2,
January
17,
2014
ABSTRACT: In Brazil, the issue of violence can be thought by two dimensions of significant proportions, drug trafficking and use and weapon trafficking and licensing. The increase of these activities, due to the involved content of violence, cruelty, and transformation of evil into a routine, is amongst the phenomena that multiply fear and the feeling of insecurity with which some Brazilian cities live currently. The backdrop of the following reflections is the Federal District, used as an example of some of the issues to be addressed. The figures involving drug possession, use, and trafficking in the Federal District have been increasing significantly, be it considering the perpetrators or the crimes, and these data are strictly related to the increase in violence in the region; its roots are multiple and complex making it impossible to explain through linear causal relations. One argument that we would like to focus here considers that if the decriminalization of drugs occurred and a countless amount of activities that currently took place in the underworld of invisibility, within the logic of terror, fear, accusation, and inhumanity were introduced into the market and regulated competition, the current violence indexes could decrease. The ones who are in favor of this argument are also willing to admit the difficulties to evidence it due to precarious amounts of information and data available, as a consequence of the illegal characteristic of the activities involved. Summing up, it can be said that the data presented and the arguments derived from these data give empirical and theoretical support to the argument in favor of broadening the knowledge and the debate about the possibility, the effects and the consequences of bringing, in a still undefined future, activities involving drug use and trafficking into legality.