Drifting in the West: Notes on Cannabis Medicine and the Narco-State in Chile

Abstract

This paper explores the development of new clinical spaces in Chile, around the medical use of cannabis sativa, from a historical perspective that seeks to define both the internal debates in the field and the contours of the phenomenon. For the latter, the social advent of activism for the liberation of cannabis is explored, and also the drug policies assumed by the Chilean state in the last twenty years, which reflect, in turn, the political and cultural drifts of the West. Additionally, it seeks to understand the phenomenon in the context of the advance of Narco in politics and culture.