Política sobre drogas no Brasil : as tendências teórico-políticas na produção de conhecimento em serviço social

Abstract

In this thesis, we have adopted the dialectical-critical method to analyze theoretical and political trends in knowledge production in the field of social work concerning Brazil’s National Drug Policy, aiming at identifying the possibilities and limits for the materialization of the ethical-political project considering knowledge production within the field. The qualitative investigation includes a theoretical and bibliographic study on the topic, which was done through the analysis of articles written by social workers, both in journals and in theses of social work graduate programs, published from 2006 to 2018. In addition, we carried out a documentary research, which analyzed Brazilian legislation in order to understand the main theoretical perspectives guiding the formulation of the policy in question, ranging from 2006, when Brazil’s National Drug Policy System was approved, until April 2019, when some considerations regarding the National Drug Policy were published. The data were interpreted and analyzed through the lens of textual discursive analysis. The corpus analyzed comprised 15 documents showing the positions regarding drug policies of the entities that represent the profession, including technical notes, brochures and Brazil’s Federal Council for Social Work’s journal CFESS Manifesta; 14 articles on the policy in question published in related journals and written by social workers; and 9 theses found at the CAPES Thesis and Dissertations Catalog, limited to works linked to social work graduate programs, using the descriptors: drug(s), drug policy, prohibitionism, psychoactive substances, and drug addiction. Based on this study, therefore, it is possible to affirm that Social Service has demonstrated, although not hegemonically, an anti-prohibitionist position and in defense of the anti-asylum fight in the area of mental health and drug policy, with a view to decriminalizing the user of the psychoactive substances and, in addition, with the suggestion of drug regulation as a possible way to end the “war on drugs” and all its expressions that violate society and are at the root of several social issues addressed in this study. It is, therefore, in the affirmation of the profession's critical ethical and political project that mobilization is sought to face the ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal wave present in contemporary Brazilian reality, reinforcing resistance movements and strategic alliances in the context of social struggles against the privatization of the public apparatus. The ideological character of prohibitionism is unveiled as a mechanism for control, repression and legitimation of the order of capital, removing the possibilities and democratic perspectives in the premise of Harm Reduction, which is more in line with the confrontation of inequalities and ethical values embraced by the critical perspective that the profession brings to its ethical and political project.