A política externa antidrogas dos EUA: suas consequências para a América Latina e à população estadunidense

Abstract

The alarming numbers of deaths caused by overdoses from illegal and legal drugs in the USA, lasts from the past two decades. The country nowadays faces the so called “opioid epidemic”, since substances derived from opium prevails amongst the cases of overdoses. The United States came at this point for its own government by dealing with drugs as something to be combated or militarized. After president Richard Nixon speech in 1971, it begun the so called “War on Drugs”. Since then, the American government blamed the developing countries on the Global South as responsibles for the entrance of illicit drugs on the country, having Latin-America as the main target for this speech. The combat and militarization reached its peak during paramilitary actions in Colombia and Mexico. But the quantity of illicit opioids that got into the USA are consequences of the State’s demands of opium derived substances