Marcelo Colaiácovo was driving to his bar in Downtown Sao Paulo on a recent May afternoon when he noticed something unusual: the hundreds of drug users that for years roamed around the neighborhood were all gone. He walked around for 10 minutes finding no trace of them. Also gone was the stench of their waste being cleaned by city hall staffers.
“I felt this strange peace,” said the 42-year-old Sao Paulo resident. “Everyone had disappeared. But how come?”
