Juliana Cunha Costa Radek

• My computer-aided analysis of the ‘War on Drugs’ in the Brazilian TV Annual News Reviews by the Rede Globo network (Retrospectivas), from 2000 to 2015, uncovers major patterns in these particular media narratives. My mixed-methods research design combines a quantitative content analysis of the most pertinent 16 episodes of Rede Globo’s Annual Reviews with the qualitative content analysis that scrutinizes the 24 segments and the 306 stories on drug-related violence. Combining historical studies, cultural theories, media studies, concepts from international criminology, official laws, and semi-official documents highlights long-term extreme socioeconomic inequalities, race hate, social stigmatization, structural violence, lethal victimization of nonwhite males, drug illegalization, and anti-drug legislation that effectively condition contemporary drug-related violence. Various reports of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and several other international and national organizations were analyzed to discuss the more recent illegalization of natural and synthetic substances and the illicit use of prescription medicaments. Brazil became an important player in the “Andean narcotic route” and turned out to be the world’s largest consumer of crack and the second largest user of cocaine after the USA. The illegalization of substances, anti-drug policies, the banalization of arbitrary violence and the lack of respect for human rights have fomented the emergence of powerful and well-structured comandos armados and violent paramilitary groups, like death squads and militias, since the beginning of the 1970s. Moreover, the ‘War on Drugs’ strategy implanted in Brazil in the 1960s, with a major focus on militarized repression rather than prevention has contributed to the increasing incidence of vulnerable drug addicts, brutal violence, homicides, disproportionate drug enforcement sentencing practices and the skyrocketing rates of incarceration of black and mestizo.