The Swedish Issue (IJDP 7.2)

By Pat O’Hare

Sweden always used to stand for a sensible attitude to most things, including sex, drugs and ... oh well, Abba seem quite good 20 years on, if not exactly rock and roll. But now? I think the Swedes have flipped when it comes to thinking about drugs. I am not talking about all Swedes, of course. I know that there are people in that country who share my opinion but its probably not a good idea to name them. People who think that way have a hard time there. I have suffered in that way myself at the hands of the Swedish press and a group of people who are responsible for making drug policy in that country. I was recently asked to help in the selection of someone to speak in a debate against the decriminatisation/legalisation of drugs as an HIV prevention strategy. The first thing that came into my head was there must be a someone in Sweden who could do this because this is what Sweden has come to represent to me.

I've never been there. I was invited once to speak about harm reduction with some other colleagues, but I was unable to accept the invitation for personal reasons and was called a coward for not going. My colleague who went in my place together with another speaker had a hard time, including being called a liar. An interview I gave over the phone was completely rewritten. The truth is a casualty in this particular war zone.

In the last edition of IJDP (Vol 7 No 1), we published a report of a meeting in Zurich between Ueli Locher and Werner Schneider, two representatives of the European Cities on Drug Policy (ECDP) and Torgny Petersson, director of the Swedish movement, European Cities Against Drugs (ECAD). Their conclusion was that co-operation between the two organisations was not possible and may not even be desirable. Ueli Locher summed it all up by saying that ECAD is not interested in active co-operation and constructive dialogue with people who do not share the ideas of the Stockholm Resolution. A suggestion made by the ECDP representatives to organise a conference together to discuss the different approaches publicly was instantly turned down by Mr Petersson. For Mr Petersson, the Frankfurt Resolution is highly irresponsible, dangerous and thus unacceptable to the ECAD and harm reduction does not help a drug user to overcome addiction and must therefore be rejected. End of story!

If only! One of the problems about this small country is that it seems to have a lot of money and seems to be prepared to spend it funding UN organisations to keep them on the straight and narrow and on funding organisations like ECAD to fight the good fight. ECAD appears to have had a senior local politician in Stockholm as one of its main protagonists. The Swedish Medical Research Board and the National Social Welfare Board provide funds. ECAD promotes the national drug policy of Sweden rather than the interests and proposals of the member cities. Indeed, Mr Petersson travels throughout Holland and Switzerland in order to explain to the naughty Dutch and Swiss how wrong their ideas about drug policy are.

And the Swedes seem to have a fantastic amount of influence. They make people scared. At the Harm Reduction conference in Florence last year I was admonished, by someone for whom I have the greatest respect, for having said something in a Round Table session on drug policy that might upset the Swedes, who may withdraw funding from a particular organisation.

However, I have recently had a letter sent to me from Sweden offering to write an article putting the Swedish point of view. I am accepting that offer and hope to publish it in the near future. (It never arrived)