SMAD How to cite this article Alves YDD, Pereira PPG. Caring and repressing: 25 years of public policies in Cracolândia. SMAD, Rev Eletrônica Saúde Mental Álcool Drog. 2023 Jul.-Sept.;19(3):28-37 [cited day month year ]. Available from: URL . https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1806-6976.smad.2023.191864 SMAD, Rev. Eletrônica Saúde Mental Álcool Drog. 2023 Jul.-Sept.;19(3):28-37 DOI: 10.11606/issn.1806-6976.smad.2023.191864 www.revistas.usp.br/smad/ * Supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científco e Tecnológico (CNPq), Grant # 150500/2020-3, Brazil. 1 Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. 2 Scholarship holder at the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científco e Tecnológico (CNPq), Brazil. Ygor Diego Delgado Alves 1 , 2 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6730-3255 Pedro Paulo Gomes Pereira 1 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0298-2138 Objective: this article seeks to describe and analyze interventions in São Paulo’s Cracolândia region, accompanying decades of public policies, from the rise of open crack cocaine consumption as a social problem in 1995 until the middle of 2020. Methodology: the bibliographic research allowed recording the interventions in these 25 years of crack trade and consumption in the region. Results: the research showed how policies act simultaneously to provide care and repress crack users. Conclusion: we can divide the frst 25 years of Cracolândia’s existence into two major periods, with regard to government interventions: the frst, from 1995 to 2012, marked by violent operations; and the second, from 2013 to 2020, characterized by programs, although violence has persisted as a mark of a prolonged necropolitics in the region. Descriptors: Crack; Crime; Public Policy; Violence. Caring and repressing: 25 years of public policies in Cracolândia*