The drugs matter in Brazil’s international agenda: a new threat to national security in the 1990s

Abstract

Drug trafficking has been gaining prominence in the international security agenda since the 1990s. In this period, illegal drugs came to be treated politically as a threat to the international system, to national states and individuals. The notion of “war on drugs” produced in the United States was internationalized and incorporated by the UN's international prohibition regime, from where it became universal. It also guided the United States’ presence in Latin America, shaping these countries’ drug policies. Brazil's stance on the topic of drugs changed significantly during this period, when its international dimension gained prominence on the political agenda. In this context, a series of legislative and institutional devices have been strengthened and instituted with the aim of combating drug trafficking, which is seen as a threat to international security. The objective of this work is to understand how Brazil incorporated the ideas, guidelines and policies established internationally throughout the 1990s, identifying domestic and international actors, their decisions and the mechanisms that allowed the internalization of guidelines established internationally around the drug problem.