The new law of drugs and its dilemmas Studying forms of inequalities within the interstices of the Brazilian legal-criminal order

Abstract

As a result of the so called New Law of Drugs (Law 11.343/06) – that abolished the confinement as a punishment for drug users caught in the act – the public opinion, at least in the first moment, adopted the idea that the Brazilian legal-criminal order would be heading towards less conservative forms of dealing with this complex question. However, what researchers dedicated to the subject have had the chance to notice is that this provoked an endorsement claiming for such issues to be decided, as usual, on the streets, if one may use the expression. And in this particular case, depending on the social origin (let us say so) of those caught using drugs (and not the Law), the treatment given by the policemen could vary from extortion (in the case of middle-class users) to the application of physical and moral punishments (when dealing with poor people or those living in favelas).