Brazilians is still marked by social inequality that involves characteristic problems of underdeveloped countries, such as poverty, hunger, misery, violence. Drugs legalization in the country presents itself as a complex and challenging issue that requires a contextualized and differentiated discussion, when it comes to designing public policies fairly applicable. The study aims to reflect on drugs legalization under the light of bioethics of protection, which considers Latin-American countries contingencies with their specificities and provides subsidies for discussions and management on the matter. Methodology consisted of searching, reading and discussing articles accessed in Virtual Health Library databases, books and official documents that deal with policies and legislation on drugs. The construction of the article made it possible to understand the complexity of the issue and the need of overcoming the naive understanding and the extremist positions of repression or excessive legalization in relation to illicit drugs consumption.
Bioethics; Drugs and narcotic control; Street drugs; Public policies