The K -Drugs market is booming in Brazil despite attempts presumed by the first command of the capital (Primeiro Comando Da Capital – CCP) Prohibit it, and the nature of the activity K-Drugs means that the veto helps to control, but not to stop, its sale.
K drugs are Synthetic substances have generally developed in local laboratories, with more than 300 variations commonly known in the Brazilian streets under the name of K2, K4, K9, “Spice”, or even “synthetic marijuana”, which is not but sold under the cover of. The raw materials of its production are legally imported from countries like India and China and then diverted and mixed with other chemicals.
Generalized drug use emerged In the prisons of São Paulo in 2019 and became popular during the Cavid-19 pandemic, when he brings drugs to the outside prison has become more difficult due to the restrictions of access. In recent years, the drug market has extended beyond the prison walls, mainly in São Paulo. The use of drugs was rare before increasing the popularity of prisons.
“There was a huge increase in convulsions that coincided with the 2020s, with a large number of events that we did not see in the 2010s,” Mauricio Yonamine, a specialist in medical and legal toxicology to the federal and scientific police, told insight, said Insight Crime.
See also: São Paulo’s “Crackland” drug market finds new real estate
The PCC achieved a monthly profit of more than a million reais (around $ 180,000) from K Drugs between 2019 and 2020 inside the country’s prisons, according to to the public prosecutor of São Paulo. Expansion of the sales of drugs in the streets has increased the possibility of considerably increasing gang income.
But at the end of May 2025, the gang try to ban sales. The disadvantages of the sale in certain places have exceeded the benefits of the CCP, because the effects of Dogs K tend to attract the police and the ambulances in the areas where its use is popular.
Some users had convulsions, hallucinations, rabies and aggression attacks, and others died. In 2023, videos spread on Brazilian social networks of K Drugs in a vegetative state, their body twisted and frozen where they stood, as if they were asleep.
“It is similar in that it acts on the same region of the brain as marijuana, but it acts so much more intensely that the effects we see are very different,” said Yonamine.
An analysis of insightful crime
Despite the strong PCC grip on São Paulo’s criminal economies, the gang failed to completely ban the sale of drugs. Instead, street sales were pushed outside the city center in its outskirts. Not all regions of the city have been subjected to the PCC veto.
Given that the substance is not one of the main traffic chains for cocaine and marijuana and is produced by local actors, traffickers do not depend on the CCP as a broker for K drugs. This allows sales to continue despite the veto of the gang.
What the ban has achieved is to keep the Cracolândia market away (Crackland), a region of the center of São Paulo where high levels of drug use are concentrated, in other parts of the city.
This decision probably contributed to extending drug use in the eastern São Paulo area, an area also controlled by the CCP but not by a drug hotspot as Crackland. This suggests that the gang has chosen to apply the prohibition only in strategic areas to its operation, such as the city center.
See also: How the “discipline” of the CCP helped the gangs to control the underworld
Crackland is close to Moinho favelaA community that works as a head office for PCC traffic operations. Favela buildings were used by the gang to store drugs for distribution, for example, which explains the CCC’s desire to keep the authorities away.
It was not the first time that the CCP has been trying to prohibit certain drugs to increase control. In the 2000s, the gang veto Crack in prisons, for example. The intention was to maintain order in the prisons, because the crack had exponentially increased homicides. However, its ban did not last long because the benefits of crack turned out to be more precious than the consequences of its use.
