Criminal drug policy in Brazil.

A contemporary study on the legislation and its impacts

Abstract

The present work intends to present a contemporary study on the Brazilian criminal drug policy, currently governed by Law 11.343/06. For this, at first, the legislation will be presented, as well as the changes arising from its entry into force in 2006. Afterwards, it is evidenced that the legal text,
by not specifying objective criteria for differentiating between users and traffickers, opened room
for the discretionary action of criminal justice administration actors, represented in this study in the figure of police officers and judges, which significantly contributed to the law being the main responsible for the increase in incarceration in Brazil in recent decades. Finally, in order to highlight the inherent impacts of current legislation, the Brazilian criminal drug policy is presented in an international perspective. In this sense, data from the National Penitentiary  epartment, from the years 2018, 2020 and 2022 will be analyzed, as well as secondary sources of information, in order to problematize the current drug policy in the country, given its highly ineffective and punitive character.