Abstract
This article is a documentary research with qualitative approach, resulting from a doctoral thesis, which sought to analyze the profile of users of crack presented by newspaper reports and two national edition magazines in the last five years. The material found was submitted to discursive textual analysis. In order to access the study object, our theoretical base was based on Michel Foucault, Erwin Goffman, Howard Becker and John Thompson, seeking to denature the ways in which discourses about crack users are placed by the media. The results showed that the discourse conveyed by the media studied builds a negative profile on the crack user, permeated by prejudice and stigma. The reports are sensationalist and hygienist, emphasizing the confrontation with the users and not only the drug itself. It concludes that the presented discourse is capable of materializing the representations of the ruling class over crack users and of reflecting on the way in which society lives with them. One considers dominant class the one represented by the biomedical model of mental health care.
Keywords:
crack cocaine users; mass media; Brazilian Psyquiatric Reform