ABSTRACT
With at least 8 million people under marijuana, cocaine and alcohol dependency, Brazil is competing with the US as the largest drug consumers. The Brazilian anti-drug legislation Law establishes a sentence of 5-15 years for those accused of transporting, selling or trafficking drugs. Brazilian president Fernando Enrique Cardoso and his Colombian counterpart launched an international campaign against the US war on drugs in Latin America. The current representations of black Brazilian women and men as pathological and dangerous subjects pose a threat to urban order. No Brazilian state illustrates the country's system of penal democracy better than Sao Paulo. The figure of the black youth making a living selling cocaine tubes on street corners challenges the scholarship on drug trafficking and violence in urban Brazil. Although information on racial disparities on drug addiction and treatment in Brazil is rare, it is not hard to imagine the racial outcomes. Incarceration policies cannot be separated from Brazilian racialized structure of domination.
