The purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish drug policy is problematized. In order to accomplish that this study investigates the directives to what is said to be the most comprehensive investigation in the field of drugs in several decades. Narcotics, like other policy areas, are based on a problematization of identified problems in society. According to the policy, drugs generate a breeding ground for inequalities in the health of the population and consumption therefore needs to be prevented and treated. Furthermore, it is specifically the problematization that establishes and legitimizes the policy's action and decision-making. This study draws upon Bacchi (2017, 3) who questions the use of the concept of problems as objective in alcohol and drug studies and theory, one should rather focus on problematizations. Further, Bacchi (2017, 5) believes that the traditional understanding of politics as a reaction can be replaced by an understanding that politics establishes and constitutes problems with inherent causes and effects. This Bacchi-approach is used in previous studies to, among other things, question deep-rooted assumptions and display how people-categorizations enables subtle disciplinary mechanisms that govern the categorized. The focus of the analysis is on the 10 central points of the directive, and I conclude that politicians emphasizes that narcotics in themselves are the considered factor in the categorization of people. According to the Committee Directive, it can thus be stated that narcotics is still the most central of the problems. An unproblematized phenomenon I identify is this conceptual use of the umbrella concept of narcotics. That is, the umbrella concept generates a binary categorical aggregation and irresponsible representation that controls the subjects through their categorization. Through the dogmatic moral understanding of narcotics as something self-evidently bad, specific types of handling are both limited and forced. It is not necessarily the substances that are the problem, it could also be people's meaningless existence that leads to abuse and overconsumption. Further the users become excluded from the group “normal” and gets retitled in terms of “addicts”, “criminals” and the “sick”. Specifically, the constitution of narcotics as self-evidently bad produces lived effects for the user such as stigma, exclusion, marginalization among other things. In the study I identify two perspectives, one that frames drug use as a health problem and one that frames it as a criminal act. Further I notice that Swedish drug policy is on a balance scale of these perspectives with its feet on each side in the hope of not tipping over. One side generates a policy of high death rates and the other an irreversible moral shift in a more neutral form.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-91354 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Olsson, William |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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