Where: History Department Amphitheater - FFLCH -USP - Av. Prof.
Lineu Prestes nº 338, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo
(SP)
When: 29 e 30 de setembro de 2005
Sponsorship: NEIP – Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
of Psychoactives
Support: FFLCH/USP; History Department – USP; Graduate
Program in Social Anthropology – USP.
Collaboration: Alto das Estrelas, Ecologia Cognitiva, Psicotropicus;
Dínamo (NGO – Responsible information about drugs), Aborda
(Brazilian Harm Reduction Association), IHRA (International Harm Reduction
Association).
The Symposium “Drugs – Controversies and Perspectives”
was held on the 29th and 30th of September in the History Department
at the University of São Paulo. The Symposium was sponsored by
the NEIP (Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives) with
the support of the FFLCH-USP, of the USP History Department and the
USP Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, in addition to the collaboration
of harm reduction associations. It represented an initiative to stimulate
discussion in the field of the Human Sciences about psychoactive substances,
highlighting the relevance of sociocultural and historical approaches
to an area generally approached only by health professionals. Twenty-five
researchers from different areas of the human sciences in Brazil and
elsewhere joined together to share their research programs and weigh
the results of research on “drugs.” The themes were as varied
as possible, including the religious and ritual use of psychoactive
substances (such as ayahuasca, consumed by Brazilian religious groups;
tobacco, used by indigenous peoples of Amazonia; and Cannabis, used
by Rastafaris), the secular or non-religious use of substances both
licit (alcohol, tobacco) and illicit (cocaine, crack, and ecstasy),
the relations between drugs and the media, medical discourses about
some of these substances, current drug policies, narcotrafficking and
policy alternatives to a prohibitionist system.
The event contributed to the
historical contextualization of reflections about psychoactive substances,
pointing to the relevance of their use in different cultures at different
times, and the various forms of classification they can take. This historical
contextualization reveals the existence of regularities in drug consumption,
opening discussion on the nature of the formal and informal social controls
of their use and about the various implications of current prohibitionist
policy, pointing toward their serious social costs such as violence,
exclusion, and criminality, among others.
The Symposium also promoted the release of two books, O
uso ritual das plantas de poder (Campinas, Mercado de Letras,
2005) edited by Beatriz Labate and Sandra Goulart and Álcool
e drogas na história do Brasil (São Paulo/Belo
Horizonte, Alameda, Editora da PUC-MG, 2005), edited by Renato Pinto
Venâncio and Henrique Soares Carneiro.
