Between laws, moralities and ethics: human rights, drug users and harm reduction policy

Abstract

This study aims to compare harm reduction policies considering human rights ideology. Specifically, if human rights can be interpreted by the ideology of domination of financial capitalism (strengthened by prohibitionism and its strategies of political control), it is worth investigating to what extent they would also operate in the ethical dimension as a policy of care for oneself, the other and with the other, and as harm reduction policy. As a methodological approach, after carrying out a theoretical review, I returned to notes that I made in my field notebook during the 1990s and 2000s (when I worked with people who used or abused drugs and became harm reduction agents in Salvador) at the Center for Studies and Therapy of Drug Abuse and at the Fátima Cavalcanti Harm Reduction Alliance permanent extensions of the Federal University of Bahia. The analyses showed that harm reducers and “drug users” configure activists in disputes surrounding drug policies and population controls, questioning the biopolitical governmentality of the Brazilian state and the governments of the state of Bahia, which combine low investment in assistance and health policies, protection of speculative capital, lethality, and over-incarceration.