The other side of the War on Drugs: Contributions from Walter Benjamin’s Thesis VIII

Abstract

This article retrieves contributions made by Walter Benjamin to the concept of history, in order to seek a new hermeneutic key facilitating an understanding of the War on Drugs from the perspective of the oppressed. It echoes the official discourse on the legitimization of the criminalization of drugs focusing on the idea of public security and social defense, rather than on public health. The article calls for new interpretations of the phenomenon in order to present the criminal policy on drugs as a continuation of the State of Exception, facilitating a search for new proposals on policies to overcome this paradigm. Finally, the article moves toward an understanding of the phenomenon as a war not meant to end, instead thriving on the unspoken effects of social control.