This paper discusses the cognitive policies present in models of prevention and treatment proposed for drug users and drug addicts. It takes as reference the laws 6.368/1976, 10.409/2002 and 11.343/2006, and a policy launched by the Ministry of Health in 2003, the Política do Ministério da Saúde para Atenção Integral a Usuários de Álcool e outras Drogas. The academic literature that supported the analysis was mainly the works of Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela and Virgínia Kastrup. The analysis made it possible to identify a movement in the cognitive policies - that in the beginning are much more focused in re-cognitive and representative experiences of cognition - towards an inventive and enactive cognition. The fact that some policies and proposals open the possibility to the practice of an inventive cognition does not constitute a logical or necessary dislocation, but, on the other hand, an ethic and political one.
prevention; treatment; cognitive policies