From “responsible users” to “solidary growers”. Problems, subjects, and policy languages in Argentina’s parliamentary debates on the drugs act reform
Abstract
The article deals with the participation of long-standing cannabis activism in the debate on the Drugs Act reform and the Medical Cannabis Act that took place during the past decade mainly at Argentina’s National Congress. The analysis focuses on the ways these activists presented themselves together with their demands and how relations were built with other key actors as the debates took place. Our main goal is to account for the many ways the relationships between different actors in an institutional setting -the National Congress-, shape both policy issues and political language as the policy-making process evolves, together with the involvement therein of subjects taking place in the debates. It is argued that these configurations, dynamic as they are and shaped by different traditions of struggle and life experiences, framed by dissimilar political contexts with practical consequences, are the outcome of a process of translation of different ways of doing politics that aims to the construction of political subjects so that they are considered valid interlocutors and alliances between a multiplicity of actors who have different conceptions about what constitutes the problem and what should be done about it.
