The spectrum of war

Law enforcement, health care, and racism in Brazilian anti-drug policies

Abstract

This article demonstrates, focusing on the Brazilian reality, that the set of anti-drug policies and social practices forms a “spectrum of war” composed of multiple therapeutic-sanitary and law enforcement tactics that replace and complement each other. The spectrum extends from discourses and practices based on the protection of life to those shaped by the symbolic and material construction of enemies to be neutralized or eliminated – with a preponderance for the latter. Both lines of action are found in health or justice, without a clear separation between these areas and, rather, a continuity. To demonstrate these intricate relationships, the study analyzes how health and justice dealt with the drug problem throughout the history of Brazil, with a central focus on race relations. To substantiate the “spectrum of war”, we use the concept of war exposed by Michel Foucault, in the course Em defesa da sociedade (1975-1976), when he stated that politics is the continuation of war by other means. For Foucault, the dominant power relations in a society derive from a war that took place within the people, in which one group imposed itself over the other. It is understood that the founding war of the Brazilian nation is slave domination and the extermination of black people. The power relations that prevail in society and institutions – including the “war on drugs” – are continuations of this original war that continues to imprison and exterminate large portions of the population.