Dossiê "Drogas, Moralidade e Políticas Públicas: diferenças e convergências das experiências brasileira e portuguesa"

Drugs, Morality, and Public Policies: Differences and Convergences between the Brazilian and Portuguese Experiences

Editors: Paulo Fraga (UFJF), Ximene Rego (University of Porto), Jorge Quintas (University of Porto), and Luiz Cláudio Lourenço (UFBA)

The journal Teoria e Cultura invites the academic community to submit original articles to the thematic dossier “Drugs, Moralities and Public Policies: Differences and Convergences between the Brazilian and Portuguese Experiences.”

Presentation

Illicit psychoactive substances occupy a critical point of convergence between public health, legal frameworks, state policies, and the dynamics of class, space, gender, and race. Far from being essentialist entities, their sociological relevance lies in the reactions and meanings they generate among a wide variety of actors and systems (Pin, 1972). This phenomenon requires an interdisciplinary lens that articulates knowledge from Criminology, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Law, and Social Work, under the broader framework of Human Rights (Bergeron, 2009).

This dossier seeks to analyze the tensions between the urgency of evidence-based approaches and the persistence of punitive biases. In the Brazilian context, although the paradigm of Risk Reduction and Harm Minimization (RRHM) and alternative sentencing represent important advances, the reality of mass incarceration—predominantly affecting young Black men and women from peripheral urban areas (Fraga, 2012)—reveals profound contradictions. At the same time, international experiences, such as Portugal’s model of drug decriminalization, offer fertile ground for comparative studies on the limits of regulation, access to medical cannabis, and institutional resistance to the agency of people who use drugs.

Suggested Thematic Axes

We welcome contributions engaging with the following topics, from national or comparative perspectives:

Regulation and Behavior
Impacts of drug control policies on social, spatial, and individual dynamics.

Cannabis and Society
Debates on medical access, home cultivation, and regulatory barriers.

Human Rights and Vulnerabilities
The impact of drug policies on historically marginalized populations.

Legislative and Jurisprudential Reforms
Analysis of recent changes in national legislation and their practical effects.

Health and Care
The harm reduction paradigm in relation to abstinence-based policies.

Guidelines for Authors

Submission Deadline:
March 15, 2026 – May 15, 2026

Formatting:
Manuscripts must follow the guidelines and section policies of the journal Teoria e Cultura (available here: Submissões | Teoria e Cultura).

Languages:
Submissions will be accepted in Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English.