THE CASE FOR LEGALIZING CANNABIS IN SWEDEN
In today's climate the Swedish drug policy has reached its all time low. The UN Human Rights Council calls it horrible, and the number of drug-related deaths is very high in an international comparison. Those who have suffered from addiction often receive poor help & get shunned socially. We have heard this in the Center Party Youth League, CUF, for a long time, but in the Swedish debate climate, the response has largely been indignation, high voices and harmful morale's. Today, the debate climate has matured somewhat, but my position is and remain the same: Swedish drug policy needs to be redesigned, and cannabis must be legalized.
The single most important reason for legalizing cannabis is that the ban makes more harm than good, something that more and more countries, states, newspapers and research panels support.
An illegal drug market where variations of cannabis are one of the most popular drugs, raises huge amounts of money into organized crime. In Sweden and Europe, the cannabis trade helps to fund criminal groups that also smuggle heavier drugs, people and weapons. In South America it has gone so far that drug-producing cartels destabilize states and sometimes entire countries. That is why it was just South American countries that pursued decriminalization to minimize the harm done, all this was discussed at the latest UN Conference on Drugs Policy.
INCREASES THE DANGER FOR THE USERS
A cannabis ban also puts the users at a high potential danger. The drug can vary in strength, and sometimes be blended with many other substances. When cannabis is sold illegally there is no guarantee that the purchased product is not an unclean and harmful mixture with unpredictable effects. In addition, the drug-dealers selling cannabis are often the same dealing heavier drugs. The illegal trade in cannabis thus finances an infrastructure that distributes life-threatening drugs.
The ban imposes the police's resources on a victim-free crime. Police and judicial systems lay great resources on chasing and punishing cannabis users. It would be incorrect to claim that cannabis is harmless, but instead of providing resources for police and judicial systems, society would make a great effort to redistribute resources to better care and combat violence and addiction. Police hunt down the lives of users, provide unnecessary dots in criminal records and wipe out police resources that could be used so much better.
FREE RESOURCES
With legalized and taxed sales, police resources are released to deal with more serious crimes, while a new source of income allows society to invest more in the care and maintenance of those who start to abuse. The same reasoning for alcohol sales is also valid for cannabis.
The sales should be checked & controlled in stores with a special license. Staff who may sell cannabis may require special education and you may prohibit the stores from selling other products that may be harmful in connection with substance abuse. With such rules, we can do more to reduce the impact of cannabis than a total ban.
Finally, cannabis is not a death drug. Few drugs are so spread all over the world as cannabis, and its effects are relatively mild. The damage is less than most other drugs, including alcohol that we socially accept. Among adults over 25, the still discovered injuries are minimal and in a recent article, where the former drug adviser to the British government, David Nutt, ranks drugs for their harmful effects, cannabis is among the least dangerous drugs, far behind the popular alcohol.
UNSCIENTIFIC PROHIBITION
The cannabis ban is not based on science. It is ineffective, detrimental to users and implies that police resources are put on completely wrong things. At the international level, it promotes a war against drugs that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in South and Central America. In Sweden, morals and zero visions have been set higher than wanting to save lives. More and more countries, across Europe and the world, realize that a cannabis ban is counterproductive, and even harmful. Now it is time for Sweden to realize the same thing.
Sources:
https://thejointblog.com/director-of-the-centre-for-alcohol-policy-research-calls-for-marijuana-legalization-to-reduce-harms-of-teen-binge-drinking/
https://alibertarianfuture.com/define-libertarian/the-libertarian-argument-for-legalizing-marijuana/https://azmarijuana.com/links/legal/