If the welfare state is threatened either by synthesis, manufacture, traffic or drugs use, it is expected that State formulates public policies to prevent injuries to the common good In layman terms, activities related to the use abusive of drugs are able to threaten that common good. So, public policies should prevent the materialization of such threat. Two sorts of public policies intending to attenuate the social problems raised by drug abuse can be identified. The first is supported by a punitive philosophy which approaches the problem by criminating the drug user. By using penal rights, it does force users to face the consequences of the law, such as prison. The second seeks protection in a de-criminalization approach, but pathologizes the user. The object of action of the two politics is the conduct or the user, and both are based in the philosophical belief of compensation or in the rule of conduct that punishment results in education. Be the user treated as a criminal or as a sick individual, the consequences of those politics result in increase of the drug economy and iatrogenicity of the illness to be treated.
Public policies; drug economy; criminalization