Juventude, drogas e a desconstrução de paradigmas estabelecidos

The word youth encompasses numerous concepts, definitions and indefinitions that raise the debate about the concept itself and, especially, the subjects included in this category. When the issue of drug use is included in the discussion of youth, particularly focusing on poor youths, the field for stigmatizations, ambiguities, misunderstandings and simplifications is widened, prejudicially associating drugs and poverty, without searching\udfor an appropriate understanding of the subjects that are part of this situation. Data from two academic masters’\udresearches are herein presented, affiliated theoretically and methodologically to Social Occupational Therapy and\udsupported by the contributions of ethnography and thnomethodology. Both researches were carried out with poor\udyouths who live in a medium-sized city in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil; they aimed at a greater approximation and apprehension of the universe of those youths and the relationships established with and through drugs in their daily lives. The data showed that the inclusion of drugs in their lives occurs differently from that assumed by common sense, that is, it appears only as one of many factors of vulnerability that they are exposed in a context of social inequality. Thus, in order to propose professional actions in occupational therapy that are actually effective in facing\uddrug issues, poor youth, and their interrelationships, we consider that is necessary to approximate and understand\udthe universe of youths from their perspectives. It is always necessary to consider the faces and interfaces of these\udthemes in a society ruled by socioeconomic inequality