Foucault on methadone: Beyond biopower

Abstract This essay reviews four texts which critically analyse methadone maintenance therapy using Foucault as a key theoretical framework: [Friedman, J., & Alicea, M. (2001). Surviving heroin: Interviews with women in methadone clinics . Florida: University Press of Florida], [Bourgois, P. (2000). Disciplining addictions: The bio-politics of methadone and heroin in the United States. Culture Medicine and Psychiatry , 24 , 165–195], [Bull, M. (2008). Governing the heroin trade: From treaties to treatment . Ashgate: Aldershot], and [Fraser, S., & valentine, k. (2008). Substance & substitution: Methadone subjects in liberal societies . New York: Palgrave Macmillan]. Taken together these works demonstrate one trajectory in the development of critical drug studies over the past decade. While all four view MMT as a regulatory technology which aims to create productive and obedient subjects, their understandings of the power relations of the clinic are quite distinct. The first two texts emphasise the social control of drug users, the third, issues of governmentality and liberal political practice, while the fourth engages with ontological questions about substances themselves. Thus while Foucauldian analysis has become familiar in social studies of drugs and alcohol, new uses for its conceptual tools continue to emerge.