The “drug dealer” as the “enemy”

Analyzing parliamentary debates on drug policy in Brazilian democracy

Abstract

This work seeks to problematize the notion of the “drug dealer” as the “enemy” in Brazilian democracy. To this end, it turns to parliamentary discourse, seeking to reconstitute what the Brazilian parliament thinks about the subject “drug trafficker” when it constructs the norms that criminalize drug trafficking throughout the democratic period in Brazil. Based on the analysis of three legislative processes (the construction of article 5, section XLIII of the Federal Constitution; the legislative process that gave rise to the “new” drug law and the legislative process that gave rise to Law n.13.840/2019 – which modified the drug law in important aspects), we sought to reflect critically on how left and right parties positioned themselves in these processes, which speeches they defended and what are the points of convergence and divergence between these fields. Furthermore, by politicizing and racializing the crime of drug trafficking, we sought to reflect critically on the place that the process of criminalizing this crime occupies in our country, as an important authoritarian node in the democratic period. By connecting the legislative process that took place during democratic reconstruction (the one that took place in the National Constituent Assembly) with another that took place throughout the 2010s (following central events in the country's history) and was finally sanctioned in the Bolsonaro Government, this work seeks to offer clues that help to uncover the limits of democracy implemented in Brazil, as well as the rise and strengthening of the far right.