No. 45 (2023): Drugs in Ibero-America: regulations, demands and consumptions

The dossier that we present compiles persistent and continuing issues around the regulations, demands and consumption of psychoactive substances in Ibero-America. Firstly, it explains how Mexican respondent youth rebelled against the mercantile and technocratic conception of culture, in the 1960s, and through the consumption of psychoactive substances and literature. The following details describe how a trans woman who engages in sexual work, with HIV, and who consumes illegal substances, becomes a triple vulnerability to situations of stigma and discrimination in Peru. Thirdly, through an analysis of how alcohol consumption is projected in Ecuadorian fiction films, the creation of an imaginary that reflects their social and cultural conception is interpreted.
Readers of this dossier will also find research input for updating the scientific debate on the problem of the cultivation and consumption of psychoactive substances in the context of the indigenous communities of Ecuador. From the approach of symbolic struggles, it is studied how psychoactive substances are an efficient capital for the State and for the market, specifically for the psychedelic tourism industry. As a contribution to the sociology of music, it analyses how Ecuadorian songs question the official discourse about cannabis to produce new aesthetics, politics and ethics, around its nature and its consumption.
These social and historical contributions are complemented by a research that analyses the treatment that Spanish newspapers gave to cannabis cultivation from 2001 to 2007 and with an explanation around globalization as a reference to question us about the war on drugs, as a cluster of power relationships and emerging alternatives that are imposed to confront them.