Abstract

NETO, José de Araújo Brito et al. Figures and facets of the prohibitionist-medicalinzg logic in Brazilian drug policies. Rev. Polis Psique [online]. 2016, vol.6, n.3, pp. 59-76. ISSN 2238-152X.

This paper offers a theoretical analysis of law and norm in the definition of Brazil’s prohibitionist drug policy in recent decades. The central argument advances that drug policies have been based on a prohibitionist perspective. At the core of this stance of legal prohibition, repressive tactics gained social acceptance and were inscribed in a plan towards a normalizing judicial sovereignty. Law and order movements increasingly intercrossed and instituted the criminalization of drug use and the drug trade-particularly for those deemed illegal-by means of an intricate field of governmentalities which resulted in a carceral criminal policy and a medicalized view of legal drug use, including psychotropics. In parallel, a set of discursive and power practices operated jointly to define through a complex system of classification what constitutes a drug and which drugs are to be considered legal or illegal.

Keywords : Prohibition; Governmentalities; Medicalization; Social Practices; Drug Policy.

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