Abstract
In this article, we present the results of our research, which aims to comprehend how the relationship between religion and the use of drugs operates in various contexts, but especially in the context of a prohibitionist paradigm. On the one hand, the story of human religious worship entails drug use, and on the other hand, religious groups form a set of important protagonists in the current “drug problem”, whether as moral agents or direct action activists (individual or community-based), and above all in close contact with the users. In one of these studies, we evaluated the public presence of Brazilian religions that use psychoactive substances ritually, and we verify that in the State’s regulatory process of this use, the presence of the scientific reference was a defining factor in the creation of public policies, and therefore, within the scope of civil rights for religious freedom. In another study, we evaluated the discourse of twenty religious leaders in the city of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte—Brazil about drug use. We perceived that they have, in general, three stances: pure and simple condemnation, with no corresponding action in the public sphere; the use of substances considered drugs, along with public actions focused on the effort to gain acceptance of this practice; and finally, “comprehensive” condemnation, with frequent public group action or rehabilitation centers. Scientific references, in this study, permeate the discourse as an authenticating force in the religious speech. Ultimately, this reality allows us to question how the academic discourse unfolds in the scope of religion, interfering in the quality and intensity of its actions with relation to drugs, and we conclude that academic posture, often underestimated with relation to the religious institutions, does not aid in the effort to confront the social problems linked to drug abuse. Therefore, an increased interaction between academia and these institutions can generate a new approach to this very serious social problem in Brazil.
Highlights
The use of drugs is widely recognized as a serious problem on a worldwide scale, as the relationship of this phenomenon among people, groups, and institutions frequently produce dramatic outcomes with disruptive social effects
In another study (Costa and Simeão 2015; Simeão 2017), we found in the discourse of the religious leadership of Natal/RN/Brazil a series of references to scientific truths, such as vice and dependence, along with the adoption of a vision focused on the substance as the cause of all the problems drug users experience, disregarding the individual and their life context
The so-called “drug problem”, a burning public issue given its intense sway, ends up playing a role in religious activities, since religions in general propose to placate the pain of the world and form a community that includes everyone, and these activities are not framed in the limits given by what theoretically is conceived of as private life
Summary
The use of drugs is widely recognized as a serious problem on a worldwide scale, as the relationship of this phenomenon among people, groups, and institutions frequently produce dramatic outcomes with disruptive social effects. For Brazilians, one of these dramatic outcomes is the institutionalization of hyperincarceration; another is the extreme marginalization experienced by drug users with regard to social equipment and safety in the cities Added to this are the creation of organized crime by groups of drug dealers related to political corruption, the militia, and the violation of human rights, together constituting a second military power. Within this scenario, religious groups have played different roles, showing that their situation is not limited to the private sphere of individual lives. Many of these groups have express initiatives in Religions 2018, 9, 136; doi:10.3390/rel9040136 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions
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