Demand for cocaine has grown among Brazilians, and in recent years the country has become a crucial path for transit of the drug as it travels from source countries in the Andes to markets in Europe and beyond.Īccording to the United Nations 2011 World Drug Report, seizures of cocaine in Brazil have soared, from 8 metric tons of the drug in 2004 to 24 metric tons in 2009. The images reflect what sociologists, health experts and law enforcement officials say is a rapidly growing problem that puts Brazil squarely in the centre of the international drug trade. In each, swarms of crack users have converted entire swaths of central neighbourhoods into nocturnal encampments doubling as open-air crack marketplaces. From the Amazonian capital of Manaus, to the colonial tourist hub of Salvador. They went from the decrepit centre of Sao Paulo, South America’s biggest city, to the waterfront slums of Rio de Janeiro. Reuters photographers recently spent 24 hours in eight of those cities chronicling their “cracklands,” as the neighbourhoods have come to be known.

Legions of the addicted roam city centres across Brazil, many of them venues chosen to showcase Brazil’s ascendance during the 2014 World Cup of soccer and the Olympic Games in 2016. Proud of growing prosperity and the millions of new consumers elbowing into the country’s broadening middle class, Brazil’s leaders prefer snapshots of new houses, new cars and the crane-dotted cityscapes of Latin America’s biggest economy.Īlong with the progress, though, has come a surge in drug use.ĭemand for cocaine has soared along with the economy over the past decade and fuelled an abundant supply of crack now ensnaring thousands of new addicts. These are not the images that Brazil wants to project. Throngs of stupefied buyers crowd around dealers before skulking away behind the telltale glow of cigarette lighters. The gritty transactions of the drug trade take over in city neighbourhoods that hum with legitimate commerce by day. A drug user consumes crack in the old center of Salvador da Bahia March 19, 2012.

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