News of the re-election of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for the fourth time has rippled across the globe as a critical electoral victory in a region increasingly electing right-wing authoritarian leaders.
In a tightly contested election, Brazil’s incumbent President has managed to turn a first-round vote deficit into an unprecedented victory: no presidential candidate has ever won after losing the first round of votes. Massive mobilisation of popular support as well as an organised social media presence expanded Lula’s reach, edging the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate past Flavio Bolsonaro – the son of the former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.
In the end, Lula won with 51.8% of the popular vote: he gained over 10 million votes from his first-round results compared to his second, beating Bolsonaro by about 4.4 million votes.
Flavio Bolsonaro’s campaign took some heavy hits as the final date for the second round of votes came closer: a highly publicised investigation into some of his donors who were involved in legal cases of corruption, drug trafficking and ammunition smuggling. Another investigation underscored the families’ past with financial embezzlement, money laundering and their connection with organised criminal groups in Rio de Janeiro – namely Adriano da Nóbrega, the former police captain-turned-head of a hitmen gang suspected of murdering Marielle Franco in 2018.
As a reminder, Flavio’s father Jair, who radically modified the country’s drug policy system to promote police-led responses on drugs rather than health, is currently serving a 27-year sentence for leading an attempted coup and plans to kill Lula and one Supreme Court Justice member.
President Lula will now serve his fourth and final term. His presidency is believed to be a boon for the Amazon, which has seen record-low levels of deforestation.
The importance of drug security
The issue of drug market control and public security were central points of discussion in the lead up to the elections. While Bolsonaro pushed for a punishment-led approach, calling for longer prison sentences for criminals and reducing gun controls (a policy created by his father), Lula called for a targeted fight against drug markets, better weapon tracking systems and expanding federal police presence across the country.
Both candidates stood apart in how they would deal with organised crime: Bolsonaro wanted Brazil to join the Shield of Americas, the US-led initiative transforming drug crime across the region into “narcoterrorism” – inviting more militarised responses to crime. Lula has criticised the veiled imperialism of the Shield of Americas, calling instead for judicial reform to accelerate processes against gangs, expanding much-needed public services in favelas and “asphyxiating” illegal markets.
Dealing with illegal markets will be crucial for the next four years. Brazil remains as a key hub for cocaine processing and global drug distribution; narco-trafficking also funds a variety of other criminal businesses like illegal logging, mining and wildlife hunting – all of which would be hampered without drug profits.
Views from Brazil
To better understand the significance of Lula’s re-election, TalkingDrugs spoke with several Brazilian drug policy activists, organisers and harm reductionists to hear their thoughts about what another Lula victory means for drug policy, its impact on their work and objectives, and hope for the next four years.
Comments were edited for brevity.
Francisco Netto
Secretary-General of the Brazilian Network for Harm Reduction and Human Rights (REDUC)
The fact that Lula was re-elected is very positive for the drug and mental health policy situation in Brazil. The far right had the worst possible policy proposals for drug policy: it was completely prohibitionist, deeply carceral, punishment-based, with a very racialised view of how to deal with the drug situation. It would definitely be a major setback for drug policy reform movement in Brazil.
Now, with four more years of Lula, we will have to deal with the issue of therapeutic communities that are funded in this current government and are likely to continue getting funding. But at the same time, we’ve made some progress through the Drug Policy Secretariat (SENAD) and the Brazilian Ministry of Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs. So there’s definitely room for more improvements and reform-driven policies.
What we at REDUC expect is to have room and space for open dialogue towards having the most advancements, the most progress in the drug policy field, including harm reduction, drug policy reform as a whole, decarceration and the issue of decriminalisation and regulation and many other correlated issues that we’ve been working on.
Luana Malheiro
Coordinator for the National Network of Anti-Prohibitionist Feminists (RENFA)
For us, these next four years of Lula and PT will be about consolidating the Left and driving home the need to end the drug war. We’ve always been critical of PT and Lula’s government on public safety; we need to get him to put in place proposals that deal with organised crime.
International debates were fundamental [to Lula’s victory]: Trump’s attempts to engage in our politics shaped our strategies. With Lula’s victory, Brazil avoids entering the Shield of Americas and can build its own response to addressing crime. We don’t treat organised crime like “narcoterrorism”, we don’t accept Trump’s use of this term to enter our country. Our main task now is to produce a critique of [the Government’s] Programme Against Organised Crime, pressuring them to include civil society participation in public debates.
Lula’s election means a lot to Brazil but also to Latin America. We now need to make Brazil understand that the fight against fascism is the fight against the drug war, as the drug war destroys democratic institutions and arms the state against its people.
Our role for the next four years is to radicalise the agenda. We don’t believe proposals to increase punishment or of a militarised state will resolve the drug war. We understand that in this moment of democratic fragility, we can’t wait. We need to work on drug issues with courage, understand that the issue of state-led violence is a reality for all communities impacted by the drug war, and we need to work on decarceration.
We believe that the Left is moving away from democratic and Leftist values when it’s defending an agenda that promotes punishment, incarceration, or policies like the anti-faction law that criminalise peripheral communities and deprives them of the presumption of innocence. We think that the Left must find itself and learn how to build leftist public policies in a political environment dominated by the right, by therapeutic communities and more.
The state must support policies we’ve raised for more than 20 years: they must support civic engagement of people using drugs, those in treatment services, and those living on the streets and in prisons.
Lula even said that in this election, we have mobilisation power. We don’t need to wait for guidance from the party to mobilise. We know our size, and now, so does Lula.
With a right-led Senate, it will be difficult for Lula to govern. I hope this Government will realise that they need the support of the people, that policies cannot just be made in the office; we need to build radical and popular participation, and we’re here to impose our participation in all possible spaces.
Uno Vulpo
Doctor, harm reductionist, and creator of Senta (sento.mesmo)
Four more years of democracy.
We were at the mercy of an attempted coup d’état, orchestrated by a group of criminals who exploited the ignorance, vulnerability, and hopelessness of a segment of the population to try to hijack the country and impose a profound regression across various spheres of society.
Within my field, Lula has championed harm reduction policies through the Ministry of Health and offered a less discriminatory perspective on substance use and sexuality, especially when compared to his political opponents.
In this sense, his continued presence represents an opportunity to broaden public debate, dismantle prejudices, and make progress on urgent issues that, for a long time, were addressed solely through the lens of repression and criminalization.
Above all, it means the possibility of continuing our work, generating knowledge, and challenging prevailing narratives, without the very existence of these discussions being constantly under threat.
This election made me realize that we need to take a few steps back when we talk about sex and drugs. Public knowledge on these topics is not only insufficient, but has been deeply distorted by decades of misinformation, moralism, and rhetoric unconnected to scientific reality.
We are living through a true epidemic of misinformation, and combating it requires more than just presenting data. We must rebuild how people understand science, foster critical thinking, and engage in ongoing, evidence-based education.
Beyond simply providing information, I want to invite people to understand these issues within a broader context, recognizing their historical, political, social, and scientific dimensions. After all, there is no point in trying to discuss sophisticated solutions when we do not even share a basic understanding of the problems.
Over the next four years, people will continue to use drugs and have sex, and we will continue to need to work toward expanding knowledge about harm reduction.
We must recognise that a presidential victory does not necessarily mean a victory for progressive agendas. Lula’s ability to govern faces significant obstacles, given the strong presence of conservative sectors in the National Congress, as well as the influence these same groups hold within state and municipal governments. This means we will continue to face institutional resistance, ideological disputes, and attempts to roll back progress.
There is also another challenge: we must educate the president himself, as well as the politicians who, in theory, share his ideological camp. After all, Brazilian progressivism often reveals its own contradictions when the subject turns to drugs, sexuality, and other issues historically fraught with taboos and moralism.
Therefore, a long struggle lies ahead. I do not expect miraculous transformations, nor do I believe that the election of a president is enough to solve such deep-seated structural problems. But I do hope we can seize this opportunity to strengthen public debate, consolidate evidence-based health policies, and make some further progress toward the modest goals we dream of achieving.
Gustavo Maia
Founder and Director of Cannabis Monitor
What’s more important than celebrating a fourth term for Lula is celebrating the defeat of the far-right, neo-fascist, coup-supporting, authoritarian, science-denying, and sell-out political project, embodied by “Bolsonarism.” This political project’s core tenets include the criminalisation of drug users and expanding the failed “war on drugs.”
Lula’s victory is a check on the advancement and empowerment of the far-right in the Global South.
However, while we may feel relieved today not to wake up with a militia-linked figure in the presidency, a difficult period lies ahead.
Historically, PT administrations have not embraced the demands of the Brazilian anti-prohibitionist movement. In recent years, we’ve made some progress thanks to civil society organising. We intend to continue our work – fostering the growth of collectives, initiatives, and ideas within this movement – while using the democratic freedoms necessary to advocate for drug policy change.
The current composition of the National Congress is highly unfavourable to our agenda; our path forward will mean driving progress through civil society mobilisation – pressuring the judiciary, regulatory agencies, and those members of Congress who are aligned with our causes.
We hope that the fourth Lula administration will not continue to underestimate the strength of neo-fascism in Brazil. We hope it will effectively confront these ideas and their 21st Century reinvention. We hope that, four years from now, we will not have to once again fight for our future against a political camp that embodies the lowest depths of political violence – one that glorifies the Brazilian military dictatorship and its torturers, and takes pride in being oppressive, racist, homophobic, science-denying, and anti-democratic.
Rebeca Lerer
Activist and Latin American Coordinator for the International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice
For us human right activists, environmentalists, people working with land defenders, this was a major win, one that gives us space to work and pressure the Government into improving policies, making treatment accessible and slowly progress into making harm reduction services available to more people, more housing and also land policies that actually contribute to reducing environmental crime and the presence of organised crime in and around indigenous land and protected areas.
The pressure over the Amazon – but also on the working class, gender violence and police brutality – would likely increase under Bolsonaro’s government as we saw from 2018 to 2022. We also saw severe impacts on public health access, including for HIV and other viral infection treatments.
All in all, [Lula’s re-election] give us more time and democratic opportunities to keep doing our work. It also means a more science, evidence-based government that isn’t so denialist.
We hope this is going to bring positive impacts to our neighbouring Latin American countries – especially Colombia, Peru and Bolivia that account for most of the coca and cocaine production. With Brazil as a main processing and distribution hub for cocaine, the current geopolitical approach by the US and narcoterrorism narrative loses momentum with Lula’s win.
If Bolsonaro had won, we would have automatically joined the Shield of Americas. So Brazil, as the main consumer and producer country, the largest economy in South America, can actually help its neighbours to regain democratic conditions to protect the forest, reduce armed violence and protect the territories.
