The current debate in relation to drugs has been formed around scientific speeches which tend to configure the issue about drugs either as a public security matter (related to the drug trafficking and the offer repression) or as a public health matter (related to demand repression on one hand and harm reduction on the other). The present paper brings a reflection which seeks to configure how the confrontation policies to drugs in Brazil attempt, in their propositions, to a struggle in the logic of public security expressed in the opposition between the confrontation policies in relation to the drug issue - the national anti-drug policy instituted in 2003 by the National Anti-drug Department (a structure created in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso by the provisory measure nº. 1669 of 1998 and changed in Lula's government to Public Policy about drugs) and the whole attention policy to drug and alcohol users of the Ministry of Health (instituted in Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government).
Drug policy; public policy; health policy; drugs