O auto do [consenso] de Viena: Estratégias de legitimação no Sistema Internacional de Controle de Drogas

Abstract

Drugs were constructed as a global problem by international bodies, responsible for drafting regulations in order to combat their consumption, cultivation and trade, while I interpret this phenomenon as a public problem, created from the universalization of something as specific as understanding that they should be used for medical and scientific purposes. This worldview mobilizes large bureaucratic and moralizing structures where agents engender efforts to dispute hegemony in the International Drug Control System, which, in turn, is organized by the United Nations. Its Member States are vying for the hegemony of a field that has recently seen its beacon broken, namely the Vienna Consensus, the understanding that the demand for drugs should be extinguished. But, in the Decade of Dissent Management (2009-2019), the main argument, from both hegemonic agents and those against hegemonic ones, persisted: health must be protected. In order to identify and understand the legitimation strategies adopted during the 62nd Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (2019), we used a methodology that combined ethnography of events and documents, participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Fifteen strategies were outlined, triggered in a context of an uphill battle between delegations from all continents for categories related to Harm Reduction and Human Rights, such as “non-stigmatizing attitudes” and “women who use drugs”. We hope to contribute to institutional debates on a global and local scale that are more permeable to the contributions of the Social and Human Sciences in Health, strengthening a science capable of radically reshaping drug policy.