Instrumentalising therapeutic and enhancement drugs as pharmacological technologies with politicogenic drug effects

Abstract

This paper continues to develop ‘drugs as instruments’ framework by reviewing Science and Technology Studies (STS), critical drug studies and anthropology of pharmaceuticals literature that frames drugs as pharmacological technologies. By discussing especially human enhancement drugs (HEDs) this approach is situated in the new materialist turn in critical drug studies. All drugs, medical and nonmedical, are framed as pharmacological technologies and discussed as nonhuman actors. When discussing drugs as technologies the paper will focus generally on their ‘social effects’ which include extra-pharmacological variables. These extra-pharmacological variables include what the author refers to as politicogenic drug effects, meaning effects that derive from contemporary drug policing.