"Unscrupulous and Morally Ill-Prepared" Laymen or Professionals? Controlling Pharmacists during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship.

This article traces the transformation of the system of control and repression of Brazilian pharmaceutical activities between the 1930s and the 1970s, through a Foucauldian framework of "differential management of illegalisms." The period between 1930 and 1960 can be understood as a process of negotiation between pharmacists and state agencies that achieved a compromise on the differential management of illegalisms in relation to drugs, with a clear distinction between "laymen" and "professionals." This compromise came into question during the dictatorship, due to institutional transformations that reinforced the autonomy of institutions of repression and a military struggle against subversion and corruption.