Chemical drugs signed a revolution in public health activities and in medicine practice, reached hegemony in the contemporary therapeutic and, symbolically, went beyond the boundary of a therapeutic instrument. Presently, they are consumed with the purpose of shaping the body or the behavior to esthetic and conduct rigid patterns settled in the contemporary culture. The analysis of 237 articles from mass circulation newspaper and magazines, concerning some of the more merchandised pharmaceutics industry drugs in Brazil, revealed a distantness tendency between drugs consumption and medical culture. In these articles, the discourse which favors the drugs consumption was characterized for the association of scientific information's with power, beauty, youth and strength symbols, sustained on and in the same time re-forcing dominants values in culture, as individualism, competition and consumption. Drugs risks were emphasized in 55% of the articles, in a discourse accenting individual autonomy and responsibly in the drugs consumption and its risks. The ask to dominant esthetic and conduct patterns plus the increase risks divulgation tends to dislocate drugs from the field of cure and health to the control and risks, signalizing its re-signification in the therapeutic and culture.
Drugs; Therapeutic; Risks; Communication; Culture
