(Image: Home made hashish in Morocco. Photo by James Tennent, via)
Last week, Swedish Public Service Radio’s (SR) award-winning reporter Randi Mossige-Norheim released an important piece of investigative journalism called Droger 24-7 [Drugs 24/7]. Droger 24-7 is a digital platform offering a series of interviews and radio documentaries about people and drugs in Sweden – dealers, users and partners of victims of drug-related deaths. The stories focus on one of Sweden’s parallel societies, i.e. “the shadow world right next to us.”
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Looking at Sweden’s high number of drug-related deaths and the country’s inability to acknowledge that the drug market is very much alive and well, the platform is a great initiative. But disappointingly, the stories don’t divert from the idea that all drugs are the same and that most people who use drugs battle with addiction.
Last September, I spoke with Berne Stålenkrantz, spokesperson for the Swedish Drug Users Union, about the stigma on drug use in Sweden. He told me how one of his union’s missions is to stop society from using words like abuser, misuser [missbrukare in Swedish] and junkie when we talk about people who use drugs. “There are plenty of different kinds of people who use drugs,” he said. “Some people work. Not everyone’s an addict.” He also told me that in this debate, people who don’t use drugs often say “you guys call yourselves junkies, so why can’t we do that, too?” To which he responds, “just because we call ourselves junkies, doesn’t mean you can.”
READ: This Is What Happened to the ‘Trainspotting’ Generation of Heroin Users
In one of Mossige-Norheim’s radio stories, “Vi hade en miljon i en skokartong” [we had a million (kronor) in a shoe box], she interviews Nathalie. Nathalie talks about her husband, Zaka, who made a fortune from dealing hashish. Zaka started using heroin and died from an overdose in 2015.
Mossige-Norheim asks Nathalie what it feels like to still be surrounded by stuff from the time Zaka sold hash. Nathalie says that her belongings are part of her life and that her past has helped her to become the person she is today. Mossige-Norheim then asks: “And when you think about the downsides – what he sold and how he earned his money – that’s something that leads people to drug abuse [missbruk]. How do you feel about that?”
It’s in itself a valid question – what does it feel like to live off criminal activities? But looking at it from the Drug Users Union’s perspective, the question suggests an unfair picture of Zaka’s customers. Or actually, of everyone who’s ever smoked hashish.
Because the story leading up to that question is a 15-minute radio feature about severe heroin addiction. We learn about heroin users stealing clothing in stores giving it to their dealers in exchange for heroin. We’ve just heard about Zaka’s struggle with heroin, and how he died from an overdose. About five minutes before that question, Nathalie mentioned that there was “a Zaka before the heroin and a Zaka after the heroin.”
Heroin addiction is the main problem in this story. But the reporter seems to draw a direct connection between people who used to buy hash from Zaka every once in a while and the heroin addicts on Sergels torg in Stockholm, who would do just about anything to get hold of smack.
“These words – abuser, misuser, junkie, missbrukare [in Swedish] – are associated with negative things,” Stålenkrantz said. “What is a misuser? I’m a human being, my name is Berne. I’m a dad. This is why [the union] refers [to drug users] as ‘people who use drugs.’”
Obviously, drug addiction is a huge problem and the stories presented in Droger 24/7 are important and need to be heard.
READ MORE: Sweden’s Battle Against Drugs and Prejudice
But in Sweden, there’s a general lack of understanding of the different shades of drug use. Drugs affect the lives of a lot of people, and as a society, we need to understand that there’s a difference between “Johan, 25” who takes coke at a nightclub every now and then, Sara who smokes weed to unwind, and Erik who uses heroin in the WC-room at Burger King. They don’t all relate to drugs on the same way.
It’s worrying but hardly surprising that that a reporter who obviously has devoted a lot of time and effort to get to know the people in her stories, doesn’t consider the difference between a user (brukare) and a misuser (missbrukare) in what she calls “drug nation” Sweden. Drug users don’t need the generalisations and subsequent assumptions Swedish media and society make about them.
Check out Droger 24-7 here and the Swedish Drug Users Union here.
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