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Photo: Matilde Campodonico / AP / TT
Since the late 1980s, his own drug use has been criminalized. Before that, the focus was more on accessing dealers and distributors. Stock Photography.
Sweden stands out with its focus on chasing individual users to get rid of the drug.
But no one knows how well the strategy really works.
Now, the Public Health Agency is also joining the crowd that wants to see an evaluation of the Swedish Drug Law.
The goal was a drug-free society when own drug use was criminalized in 1988. A few years later, in 1993, incarceration was introduced on the criminal scale.
– Since then, police efforts have been increasingly targeted at street level and to individual users. If you look at the punishments that are condemned, then the vast majority of them are for your own use, and are generally aimed at people with addiction problems who come up again and again, says Björn Johnson, professor of social work at the Malmö University.
The idea of criminalizing their own use was to discourage and be able to detect and intervene at an early stage when people, especially young people, used drugs. But the effects that the legislation really had are uncertain. The last evaluation was made 20 years ago.
Increased mortality
In recent years, both drug use and drug-related mortality have increased in Sweden. Last year, the government commissioned the Public Health Authority to propose measures to prevent drug use and reduce damage caused by the drug. In early May this year, the report was finalized, and the authority proposes, among other things, that the drug sanctions law be evaluated, including the criminalization of personal use.
– It is necessary to see if the law works as planned. We don’t really know what the effects have been, ”says Joakim Strandberg, head of the drug prevention unit at the Public Health Agency.
In February this year, the Riksdag’s social committee asked the government to evaluate Swedish drug policy. Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren said she appreciated the demand for an evaluation, but that the government does not want to include the issue of its own use, SVT previously reported.
– I do not answer exactly how we do it, but when it comes to my own use, I have not changed the perception, nor the government, Hallengren tells SVT about the report of the Public Health Authority.
“Gratuitous’
Björn Johson believes he would “be on time” with an assessment of drug sanctions: there are signs that it did not have the intended effect. Since the criminalization of their own use, the proportion of young people who have tried drugs has increased. As previously mentioned, drug mortality has also increased considerably.
– We cannot know what the situation was without criminalization, but there is nothing in the statistics to indicate that this had a restrictive effect in Sweden, says Björn Johnson.
– Then, many of the scarce resources of the police are dedicated to prosecuting users, and I think that many police officers consider that it does not make sense to persecute drug addicts for this type of crime. The consequence will only be that they are sentenced to daily fines that they still cannot pay, he continues.
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