The Political Pharmacology of Methadone and Heroin in Danish Drug Policy

Abstract

This article uses the concept of “political pharmacology” to show that drugs are complex and mutable entities, the constitution of which is as much a political (power) issue as it is a technical one. The article analyzes the negotiations and struggles that have been involved in the constitution of methadone and heroin as maintenance drugs in Denmark. Danish drug policy on medical-maintenance treatment was for many years dominated by a medico-administrative technocracy. But from the mid-1990s, this technocracy, and the way it defined maintenance treatment and maintenance drugs, was challenged by drug users and other actors. They were, among other things, dissatisfied with the medical constitution of maintenance drugs as “stabilizing medications” and demanded that the drugs should also be allowed to function as “intoxicating substances.”