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Week 3 / 2008: Drug users made into non-persons

The drug problem cannot be solved by giving the state a legal monopoly to sell them. “Some of the criminal activities around drugs would probably stop,” says Aarne Kinnunen, who has studied Finnish drug policy, “but the number of users would increase to the extent that the overall impact on society would be negative.”

Although he finds room for improvement, he commends the Finnish drug policy for efficient restriction of trafficking, the curbing of street sales, good dissemination of information, and effective, easy-access treatment for addicts.

“The most important thing, however, is a wider ethos that all are equal and everyone has equal opportunities,” Kinnunen stresses. “This is what makes marginalisation and being driven to drugs more unlikely.”

However, this ideal has not been achieved in Finland. To the contrary, Finnish drug policy is marked by an approach towards drug users that, by international comparison, appears quite stringent. “When the borders in the early 1990s opened up between Russia and Europe, an atmosphere of fear emerged,” Kinnunen says. “New types of drugs were introduced into the market, and new users appeared.” That led to a situation where tighter controls were accepted in Finland without question.

At the same time, drug users turned into non-persons, and for the police, simply catching drug users was an easy way to produce results. Kinnunen advocates treating drug users as individuals. “Their rehabilitation should be based on close-knit networks in their local environment,” he says.

Aarne Kinnunen’s doctoral dissertation in sociology, entitled The paradox of criminal policy – studies of drug crime and its control in Finland, was publicly examined at the University of Helsinki on 11 January 2008.

Text: Laura Walin
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
www.helsinki.fi/digitalcommunications
Translation: Valtasana Oy

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