Addiction doesn’t always look at family background or social status.
in the beginning of 1990’s Thorvald Stoltenberg was one of Norway’s most famous politicians and diplomats, a social democrat known by the whole nation.
One day he was involved in peace talks in the Balkans – and the next he was looking for his heroin-addicted daughter Nina From the streets of Oslo.
Sometimes Nini’s brother was involved in the search Jens Stoltenberg: The future Prime Minister of Norway and later Secretary General of NATO, who became known to Finns as well.
Vesa’s drug addiction from an elite family was to lead to a major upheaval in Norway’s drug policy.
Nini Stoltenberg, who worked as a TV presenter, became one of the prominent advocates of drug policy reform in Norway. He advocated that drugs should be seen as a social and health issue rather than a criminal matter: treatment, not punishment.
Father Thorvald Stoltenberg also publicly questioned many stubborn assumptions that many people have about people who use drugs, and worked in politics to improve their position.
In the 21st century, other Norwegians who use drugs also came out of the closet and started demanding a more humane drug policy. Norwegian professor of criminology and researcher at the Police Academy by Paul Larsson according to the organization of users and social media campaigns contributed to the fact that ordinary people’s view of people who use drugs took on more nuances.
– Public opinion changed, and Nini Stoltenberg’s role as the face of heroin use and her father’s influential work should not be underestimated, says Larsson.
Researcher proposes “Alko model” for drugs
Oslo Police Academy researcher Paul Larsson, who visited Helsinki in March, does not believe that drug use and drug trafficking can be controlled by police forces. A lot of money is spent on supervision, but it has not stopped young people from trying drugs or stopped the criminal drug trade.
We in the Nordic countries believe that the police can solve all social problems, but they cannot solve the drug problem. Rather, social and health services are needed for that.
Paul Larsson
The solution offered by Larsson is undeniably radical: allowing the use of all drugs and a state-regulated drug market.
Allowing the use of drugs would reduce harm, as users would not have such a high threshold to seek help, says Larsson. A state-regulated drug market, on the other hand, would cut down on illegal trade and reduce poisonings caused by impure substances.
– We have a long experience with the drug war: it has not stopped the illegal drug trade, but it has made the criminals richer, says Larsson.
According to Larsson, it would not be a matter of legalizing drugs, but of re-regulating them. In his opinion, a model could be taken from, for example, Alko’s monopoly; another possibility would be sales licenses granted to pharmacies or other companies.
In the United States, there is a fairly free market for the sale of cannabis. Larsson would rather rely on the Nordic model, where the state controls the market.
– Otherwise, drugs will become just one commodity among others. In the United States, the regulation of the legal drug market is mainly guided by business principles, when they should be guided by the social and health perspective, says Larsson.
1. Allowing the use of drugs would send the wrong signal to young people, for example
– This is one of the key counter-arguments in the Nordic countries. It overestimates the effect of punishment on human behavior. There is little evidence to support this claim.
2. Even if the state monopoly controlled drugs, there would be an illegal market alongside
– It is very likely that the majority of people would prefer to buy drugs whose origin and purity are known. In Canada, the mistake was made that cannabis grown with a license costs twice as much as cannabis from the illegal market.
3. The better the supply, the higher the consumption
– The supply is still really good at the moment. Young people use their phones to order drugs delivered to their doorstep.
In Finland, support for waiving the criminalization of drug use has been given, for example, by the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare THL and many substance abuse organizations working to prevent harm.
The political will to remove the criminalization of drug use has not yet been found in Finland. Parliament’s Legal Committee canceled in 2022 (you switch to another service) a citizens’ initiative that proposed decriminalizing the use of cannabis, i.e. waiving the criminalization of it.
Lone wolf at police academy
Paul Larsson has been a professor of criminology at the Oslo Police Academy for more than 20 years. He has investigated white-collar crime, organized crime, drug trafficking and environmental crimes, among other things.
The more he researched drug crime, the more it became clear to him that current efforts were not effective. He gained visibility when the media became interested in his views that deviated from the mainstream.
– Ten years ago I was a lone wolf with my opinions. Some people from within the police academy supported me, but not publicly. If I had been a police officer talking about allowing the use of drugs, my career would have been destroyed, says Larsson.
Today it is easier and he is no longer the only one from the police academy who speaks for a more liberal drug policy.
The police management blocked the reform by appealing to emotions
A big change was very close in Norway.
For a while in 2017, the Norwegian parliament had a majority that supported allowing the use of all drugs. Possession of a small amount would also have been allowed.
The historic reform of Norway’s drug policy eventually stumbled into a counter-campaign by the police. Norway’s top police chief appealed to the feelings of citizens and decision-makers by saying that drug policy reform would be gambling with the future of young people.
The discussion reached a dead end: many would not have wanted to punish drug addicts, but at the same time they wanted to protect young people from drug experiments. Penalty of use cannot be removed only from users who are in a bad jam.
The tactics chosen by the police worked. The reform was buried in 2021.
Larsson was not surprised, as he knew the police’s strong position on the matter. He believes that Norway’s drug legislation will be relaxed one day: what the rest of the world leads, Norway will eventually follow.
However, the result of the big drug policy debate was that the public prosecutor intervened in the activities of the Norwegian police. It had come to light that the police used excessive measures from the point of view of the law against people who use drugs.
Larsson admits that there is no easy solution to the problems caused by drugs.
– None of the solutions will eliminate all the problems, but re-regulating drugs would reduce the overall harm, Larsson believes.