Questioning the Unquestionable

Questioning the unquestionable: A normative study of the values, argumentation, and logic of the Swedish drug policy By: Alexander Carmler Supervisor: Dr. Simon Birnbaum Södertörn University | School of Social Sciences Master’s dissertation 30 credits Spring semester 2021 (Political Science, Master’s Programme) Abstract Sweden’s drug policy still invokes the ideas of zero-tolerance and prohibition despite the high reported number of drug-related deaths and arrest rates for using drugs in Sweden in the latest years. To reach knowledge about why prohibition of illegal drugs has remained such a strong staple of Swedish politics for the latest 60 years, this study asks questions about which ideas and arguments constituting the Swedish drug policy, examines the logical coherence of these, and proposes an alternative policy route which aims to mitigate the shortcomings of the current policy. The drug policy field is extensive and studies from different nations show that drug policies that move away from prohibitionist ideas have succeeded in both reducing drug-related mortality rates and reducing the stigma that is attached to either using or abusing psychoactive drugs. Because of an identified unclarity of why the prohibitionary ideas in Sweden have remained despite recent developments, this study aims to fill a gap in existing research by normatively analyzing the ideas in the policy. Since these ideas have great importance in restrictions of individual liberty and public health considerations, knowledge about them is essential to create because liberty and public health are fundamental aspects in any democratic society. The research endeavor performs an internal validity check as the methodological approach to check the internal logic and arguments of the policy and uses a theory of liberty to shed light on the trade-offs between liberty and public health. What is discovered is that the Swedish drug policy builds on inconsistent arguments and incoherent logic and has a moralizing intent that allows for restrictions on individual liberty to reach a utopian vision of a drug-free society. Also, this study shows that it is possible to create a policy that can mitigate the harms caused by the current by adhering to the principle that individual liberty should stretch as far as possible when no harm is caused to another. The implications of this are that it will be harder to justify the zero-tolerance approach in the future and that future policy must look to other policy approaches rather than build policy on assumptions based on outdated moralism. Carmler Contents 2 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4 2. Research problem and guiding research questions ........................................................ 8 2.1 Research questions............................................................................................................. 9 3. Previous Research ....................................................................................................... 11 4. Material ..................................................................................................................... 14 5. Method ...................................................................................................................... 16 6. Theory ........................................................................................................................ 19 7. Operationalization ...................................................................................................... 23 8. A note on intersubjectivity .......................................................................................... 27 9. Analysis: The Swedish drug policy ............................................................................... 29 9.1 Legal aspects .................................................................................................................... 29 9.2 History ............................................................................................................................. 30 9.3 Question 1: What are the values, logic, and value-hierarchy within the Swedish drug policy? .............................................................................................................................................. 34 9.4 Question 2: Is the argumentation behind the Swedish drug policy logically coherent? ........ 41 9.5 Question 3: What is needed to provide a policy alternative that is more logically coherent and eliminates identifiable harms and injustices of the current drug policy? ............................ 48 9.5.1 A desirable policy ............................................................................................................................... 49 9.5.2 A viable policy .................................................................................................................................... 51 9.5.3 An achievable policy ........................................................................................................................... 53 10. Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 56 11. Discussion and future research .................................................................................. 59 References...................................................................................................................... 62 Carmler Acknowledgements 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my family for the support given in education throughout my life. Hedvig for all the support and love you provide. Also, thank you to all my friends who always support me and have been missed and thought about dearly while I have been locked up in my writing room. Special thanks to Dr. Simon Birnbaum who has been my guide throughout the process and whom I could not have done this without. Carmler Introduction 4 1. Introduction Psychoactive drugs such as Opium or Cannabis have been used by human beings since ancient times to medicate, get recreationally intoxicated, but also to attain spiritual and cultural understanding, there is even evidence that suggests that they might have inspired initial human religious experiences (Merlin, 2003, p.295). A controversial idea to consider for sure, but interesting insight into the longevity of human use of psychoactive drugs. The modern use of psychoactive substances falls on a wide spectrum, religious, medical, cultural, or recreational, but the modern-day application of these substances is generally not so closely intertwined with the ritualistic or religious use as in ancient times (Merlin, 2003, p.296). A widely held political conception during the latter part of the 20th century has been that certain drugs, generally all identifiable except alcohol and tobacco, are so harmful to the fabric of society that they need to be banned, and the users of these drugs ostracized from ‘regular’ society. For instance, the aptly named “War on Drugs”-campaign, implemented globally and spearheaded by the federal government of the U.S.A since the Nixon Administration 1971, an administration which declared drug abuse as “public enemy number one” (Nixon, 1971). The global “war” on drugs can be seen as an attempt at forcefully reducing illegal drug trade and consumption in the United States and worldwide. This war-on-drugs-rhetoric became most salient during the latter half of the 20th century, however prohibitionist attitudes to psychoactive drug consumption can be traced back to the formal prohibition of Alcohol and other intoxicants under Islamic Sharia law stemming from passages of the Quran dating back to the 7th century (Michalak & Trocki, 2006). Most prevalent as a political idea in the 20th and 21st century, psychoactive drug prohibition is not an inherently American, or Western imagining, as may be thought when only looking at a latter couple of centuries. Around 500 years after Siam (Current Thailand) first prohibited the smoking of Opium, the first state law in America prohibited it (Windle, 2013, p.1194). Thus, the question of how to deal with drug use has been on the minds of rulers and politicians throughout history. In contemporary politics, ideas fall on a spectrum ranging from libertarian views considering drug use to be an issue only concerning the individuals using them, not to be regulated whatsoever by the state, to extremists on the other side such as President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte which administration has enabled law enforcement to be able to shoot suspected drug users and drug dealers on sight, or if they are ‘spared’ thrown in overcrowded Carmler Introduction 5 prisons with “disgraceful conditions” (Ghiabi, 2018, pp.209-210). Regardless of where on this spectrum drug policy ideas fall, extreme means such as in the case of the Philippines are arguably not fitting in a state claiming to respect a contemporary understanding of human rights and leaving the issue out of politics altogether cannot arguably be seen as a reasonable stance from governments due to the negative consequences drug use can have on individuals and society. Generally, drug policy and drug laws have the effect of producing violence from the state, due to the enforcement of the law by the state carrying the monopoly on violence,

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