THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRUG ABUSE IN SWEDEN

Drug abuse in the form we observe it in society today began in earnest
during the 1960's. Sweden was actually one of the first countries in
Europe to develop an epidemic of intravenous drug abuse. The rest of
Europe has since followed suit.

Drug abuse has played a major role in the control policy debate and
has had great effect upon criminal statistics and criminal policy.
Narcotics are also the most common reason given for intensifying
police co-operation in Europe.

Forms Of Abuse In Sweden

Characteristic of heavy drug abuse in Sweden is the large scale
injection of amphetamine that began amongst Swedish abusers. This is
in contrast to other countries where heroin became the dominant drug
of heavy abuse. Amphetamine differs from heroin in that it is a
stimulating and activating drug and not numbing and sleep inducing.
Another difference is that heroin, but not amphetamine, cause strong
withdrawal symptoms. This has the effect of making heroin more
dominant in the lifestyles of its abusers as they need maintenance
doses approximately every four hours. Amphetamine addicts on the other
hand must stop their abuse after a few days as the drug no longer has
any effect and tiredness begins to take over.

Why amphetamine became so dominant amongst Swedish abusers has not
been thoroughly investigated. Abuse began amongst bohemians and
artists in Stockholm during the 1950's and spread from there to the
criminal underworld. As a result, new recruits to drug abuse were
persons connected with institutions such as prisons and juvenile
delinquent reform schools.

From the middle of the 1970's, heroin abuse enters into the picture
but has so far not constituted more than one third of the total of
heavy drug abuse. Heroin abuse seems however to be increasing its
share of heavy abuse over time. During the whole period since the
beginning of the 1960's the most common form of drug abuse has been
the smoking of cannabis. This is still so today despite the
introduction of newer drugs like ecstasy and cocaine during the
1990's.

The Official Picture Of The Development Of Drug Abuse

The overall picture of the development of Swedish drug abuse has long
been unclear. The official version can be summed up by saying that the
liberal narcotics policies of the 1960's and 70's resulted in steadily
increasing problems until a shift in policy in the direction of
tougher laws around 1980 pushed back drug abuse on a scale that lacked
precedent in Europe. The figures quoted are based upon two types of
statistics. The first and most important concern the frequency with
which young people have tried drugs. Statistics from the Institute of
Public Health (1993) which have been presented to the rest of the
world show that experimentation with drugs amongst young people
dropped drastically with the policy shift of 1979-80.

From the assumption that reduced experimentation with drugs
automatically leads to a reduction in the development of heavy drug
abuse, the conclusion has been drawn that recruitment to heavy abuse
has decreased along with the reduction in drug experimentation. This
hypothesis is also said to have support in the fact that the
proportion of younger heavy abusers was lower when statistics of the
heavy abusers of 1992 were compared with those of 1979

A critical examination of the official version of the development of
abuse.

In Swedish drug policy there are differing opinions on two crucial
points. These differences concern cause and effect in regard to policy
and the development of abuse. There are different opinions regarding
time context, that is to say, when developments went in one direction
or the other and to what extent this can be linked to differences in
policy between the different periods.

Some facts are clear. For instance the peak in the Swedish drug
epidemic, according to all sources, occurred at the beginning of the
70's. That is 5-10 years before the new policy, which took all the
credit for the dramatic decrease even though drug abuse was decreasing
before the new policy had time to take effect.

Another fact is that the decline that is used as evidence of reduced
new recruitment to heavy drug abuse occurred abruptly at the end of
the 1980's. That is more than five years after the new policy achieved
full effect. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that it is
only amongst the absolute youngest that a reduction can be seen to
have occurred in the statistics of 1992 compared with those of 1979.

One question that needs to be asked is that if there are not other
explanatory factors at work than an increase in law enforcement
involvement in narcotics policy. It has been possible to show that not
only a reduction in experimentation with narcotics occurred in the
1980's. There was also a decrease in alcohol consumption and that
cannot be attributed to the police or to the effects of narcotics
policy. This is even more true of sniffing which also shows a similar
downward trend.

Regarding the reduced proportion of young heavy drug abusers in the
figures for 1992, two factors are worth taking into consideration. One
is that youth unemployment in Sweden during the 1980's was at its
lowest ever at around 2 %. Compare that number with the average for
the European Union at the same time of around 10-30 %. The connection
between youth unemployment and the level of drug abuse, especially
regarding heroin, has been shown in a comparative study between
several member states of the European Union.

The fact that the decline occurred during the last years of the 80's
also indicates that the HIV epidemic, which was given much attention
around 1985, can have had an effect upon the prevalence of abusers. It
has been shown that this epidemic caused panic among swedish abusers.
A similar decline can also be found in the development of heavy drug
abuse in Norway at around this time

Epidemic Vs Trend

The founding father of "The drug free society", Nils Bejerot,
introduced the term epidemic as a way to illustrate how drug abuse
develops. This was met with some justifiable criticism, since the
introduction of this medical term implied that abusers infected
innocent people and especially young people with their abuse.

The epidemic model is accepted within the social sciences to describe
fads and other social phenomenon. Characteristic for such "epidemics"
is that they tend to rise sharply then decline and not uncommonly to
more or less die out. The development of the Swedish amphetamine
epidemic could be interpreted as such a phenomenon since abuse and
especially new recruitment diminished to only a fraction of its
original size within just a couple of years and with only
comparatively modest measures taken by the authorities.

On the other hand, when the authorities at the end of the 1980s and
beginning of the 90's turned the thumbscrews on drug abusers, no
noticeable positive effect on abuse was observed. Drug use was
criminalised in 1988 and was intended to give "clear signals" to young
people that experimenting with drugs was not only unacceptable and
deplorable but criminal as well. As can be seen in diagram 3, this did
not accomplish anything. Nor was anything accomplished when the law
was tightened in 1993 by introducing prison into the scale of
punishments as well as carrying out tens of thousands of urine tests
in order to detect drug abusers early and either frighten them or
force them into compulsory treatment programmes.

If we examine another side of the "new" Swedish drug policy, forced
treatment has not either been able to show positive results. Instead,
Sweden has what is perhaps the highest mortality rate in the western
world amongst heroin addicts. Narcotics related deaths are also
continuing to rise in Sweden.

It is also significant that now, as the figures for drug
experimentation amongst young people have risen dramatically for five
successive years, this is suddenly no longer regarded by the
authorities as an indication that hard drug use is also rising.
Instead this abuse is attributed to "party drugs" and fads etc. The
fact is however that the greatest increase is in cannabis abuse and
this is still most commonly found amongst young persons of low
education living in larger cities.

It is a bad omen that behind the increasing drug use, in which smoking
heroin is beginning to play an increasing role, there are again rising
trends of alcohol abuse and sniffing amongst young people. And not
least a persistent and alarmingly high rate of unemployment.