Policies on drug and care practices in everyday life on the streets

Abstract

This study aims to understand the care practices/care service of homeless drug users in a small municipality in Minas Gerais. This qualitative research used five months of participant observation, from August 2022 to January 2023, and a field diary as its methodological path to collect data. This research found the difficulty of public services in offering effective health care given the complex needs of homeless subjects who use drugs. Moreover, it evinced the moral and prohibitionist perspective that marks Brazilian public policies and society as a whole. In this context, potent movements of life and resistances occur in subjects’ everyday scenarios to survive and produce health care on the streets.