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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Sweden: OPED: How Not To Reduce The Drugs Trade
Ostgota Correspondenten (Sweden)
Friday 24 Nov 2000 Website: http://www.corren.se Author: Goran Grauers, Stora Forsa HOW NOT TO REDUCE THE DRUGS TRADE The Swedish Model of Drug Criminalisation Does Not Work Today far fewer drug dealers are arrested, but many more users are. At the same time drug abuse is a social problem that cannot be criminalised away, writes Goran Grauers. Sweden has created a system that has moved as far down the narcotics ladder as it is possible to go in the fight against drugs. We don't arrest the dealers and smugglers, we arrest the abusers. Why don't we arrest alcoholics and throw them in prison as well? No, abuse is a social problem and cannot be criminalised away. Crowded In Prison We only need to look at the figures from customs and CAN ( Central For Drug and Narcotics Information) to see that this is completely insane. So far this year customs have seized well over one ton of hasch. If we play with the thought that everyone who uses hasch smokes half a gram per day (this is on average far too high a figure) then it means there are about 3000 abusers in the country who should be in prison. But as customs admit they only seize about 10% of what is coming into the country, it means there are 30,000 people who qualify for prison walking our streets. CAN has estimated there are about 20,000 heavy drug abusers in Sweden who use amphetamine or heroin daily. We now have a figure of 50,000 potential convicts and we haven't yet counted all those who use cocaine, ecstasy, smoking heroin, anabolic steroids and all the other drugs. Arresting heavy drug abusers should not be a problem. Most of them are known to the police and Social Services. They need their drugs daily, so it shouldn't be too big a problem to follow them and arrest them. But do we have enough space in prison for them all? Who Is Going To Stop It? If we continue to use CAN's figures we see that a heavy drug abuser needs 2500 Kronor ($250 USD) per day to finance his abuse. They steal their drug money, but only get 10% of the value of stolen goods and cause damage of an equivalent value (smashed car windows etc). We are now up to a daily cost of 50000 Kronor ($5.000 USD) per abuser. This figure times 20000 gives a daily cost of one billion Kronor ($100.000.000 USD). Who is going to stop this? The radio manufacturer who sees a radio stolen from a car? Hardly. He gets a new market because the kind of person who buys stolen goods is not a potential customer. He sells a new radio anyway as the stolen one is replaced by the insurance company and self risk. The insurance company then? Won't they put a stop to it? Certainly not, they make enormous profits and as long as we pay our premiums we won't hear a word from them. How about the government, won't they put a stop to all this? Hardly believable as one billion in lost production per day would have major consequences with a massive rise in bankrupcies and unemployment. The Swedish state does not bear the financial cost of drug abuse, it is us citizens in the form of insurance premiums and other personal losses. A loss of one billion is the figure for Sweden, how big is the figure for the western world and what would be the consequences of this market vanishing? Multi Billion Industry Is the government really serious about its narcotics policy? It's difficult to believe this as they do not arrest all the heavy drug abusers who demonstrably are known to the police and social services. If they were serious the cost of more prisons would be astronomical and I believe we citizens would start to question the policy. Taxes would rise dramatically, or else we would have to completely scrap health care, schools and roadworks. If we look at the problem internationally we see that the drugs mafia, according to German police, invested 700 billion Swedish kronor in financial institutions, banks, media and airlines in just 1992. The United Nations estimated that the narcotics industry turned over 500 billion dollars during 1999 and thus controls 10% of world trade, greater than the entire worlds automobile industry. Quiet About the Results If the world decided to use the same policies as Sweden, we would soon find that a large part of the worlds population would be in prison. The whole of Great Britain would not be big enough for a prison colony. It seems we in Sweden believe we can solve these problems by throwing abusers in prison, but personally I think it is a little naive and frightening that a Minister of Justice should be forced to recant when he points out the truth. All of the above information is from the United Nations, German police, customs, insurance companies and CAN. No one can question the figures, but no one will admit that the conclusions drawn from them are the result.
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