“Tropical Stupor”: Drug Regulation, Public Surveys, and State-Building in Brazil (1930–1950)

This article shows how drugs were defined as an object of state knowledge in Brazil during the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on the work of the National Commission of Narcotics Control between the 1930s and the 1950s, I highlight two main dimensions of this process. First, in relation to the effort to regulate the legal drug market and to control medico-scientific professions, the commission designed a set of statistical and accounting procedures, as well as a process of administrative control and inspections that led to an accumulation of data on drug use and medical practices. Second, in relation to the effort to eradicate cannabis cultivation and consumption in Brazil, a series of surveys and inspections were conducted to identify the origin of cannabis usage, locating it in the customs of the so-called backward populations of the north/northeast regions of Brazil, especially in relation to former slave culture. This process produced a considerable amount of ethnographical and statistical data on cannabis, creating both a public-health and nation-building issue in Brazil.