ABSTRACT
This final chapter explores the most salient common trends in drug law and policy across Latin America. The authors explore how relatively liberalizing formal legal frameworks and discursive trends contrast with the practice of law enforcement. The chapter analyzes how formal law across the region, although purportedly increasingly tolerant with users while tough on suppliers, in fact enables harsh punitive legal enforcement practices overwhelmingly on drug users. Furthermore, it explores how the militarization of public safety in key countries in the region, extension of prison terms, and prison overpopulation, the frequent violation of due process rights, and increased illegal practices by authorities, including torture and illegal use of lethal force, are linked to drug laws and drug prohibition. These trends, the authors argue, are explained largely because of the specific way in which the “liberalizing” reforms are designed and embedded in an overwhelmingly punitive and penal system.
