Talk:Drug policy of Sweden

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Drug Policy, an attempt to improve Wikipedia's coverage of drug policy. Feel free to participate by editing this article or by visiting the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

	The article on Drug policy of Sweden is supported by WikiProject Sweden, which is an attempt to improve the quality and coverage of Sweden-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page; if you have any questions about the project or the article ratings below, please consult the FAQ.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Drug policy of Sweden article.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability
Archives: 1

[edit] Third opinion dispute resolution requested

An editor has requested a Third opinion intervention here. Who are the parties in disagreement and what are the pertinent issues? Please give me a brief description and realted diffs. Thanks! --Kevin Murray (talk) 11:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The reason that I asked for a Third opinion was that the user Steinberger deleted the entire section "Statsticis ...." on the grounds that it was "urelated." It is not about the exact wording since he delete text on this no matter what I write. ["Drug policy" + "number of prisoners"] gives 853 hit in Google. I want to have a section on this in the article and he an another user doesn't.Dala11a (talk) 11:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an article on the Drug Policy of Sweden. As it stands, Dala11a's section says nothing about the drug policies. If Dala11a could find a reference that connects his statistics to the policies of Sweden, I would be glad to consider it's merits. As of now, it is his own opinion that these statistics are significant and relevant to the article. Without references, his attempt to make a connection is original research and should not be included. Mmyotis ^{^^o^^} 12:19, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the description of Mmyotis. Steinberger (talk) 12:39, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Initial observations for 3O

Observation (A) The section which is in dispute read (with gramatical corrections and by sentence as a numbered line item):

1. 20.5% of those sentenced to prison in 2005 were convicted of either drug offences or for smuggling drugs. (verified by note 13)
2. A high percentage of prisoners have severe drug problems, and over 55 per cent of these have injected narcotics (unreferenced).
3. In 2004 Sweden had 84 people per 100,000 in either prison or remand prison (in Swedish called häkte).(verified by note 14)
4. This is clearly less than the average for OECD (132 persons per 100 000) and much less than in the US. (725 per 100 000).(verified by note 14)

Sentences 1 and 3 are verifiable. Sentence 4 is an observation from verifiable facts from the same source material without synthesis among data sources or studies, though the word "clearly" is a bit editorial. Sentence 2 is (a) unsourced facts, and (b) includes the subjective opinions "high percentage" and "severe drug problems.

Observation (B) There are two other similar sections: "Drug related death" and "Drug-related public expenditure" which are de facto commentary on the results of the Drug policy of Sweden, while not actually describing specific drug policies. This to me suggests that a section named " Drug related imprisonment" might be pertinent.

Any comments on my observations? --Kevin Murray (talk) 13:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Source 2: "A high percentage of prisoners have severe" Source: For eg. Kriminalvården: the end of page 12 "nearly 70 percent have no once injected drugs." etc. Suggestion: "70%" instead of "high percentage".

Some quotes:

"According to a report on prison growth by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, "Over the last 25 years, the number of state facilities increased from just fewer than 600 to over 1,000 in the year 2000, an increase of about 70 percent. In other words, [more than 40 percent of state prisons in operation today opened in the last 25 years"".http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm One can find variants of this in thousands of webb pages. A frequent argument is that the effect of zero tolerance on drugs is equal to a big increase in number of prisoners. But the effect over a longer period is also relevant. One of the assumptions behind the Swedish drug policy is zero tolerance in the longer term, reduce the spread of drug abuse and thereby also affect the number of drug offences in a positive way. Compare Nils Bejerot's theories on addiction. User Steinberger knows this but he probably believe that the assumption is false.

"5.5 Drug Addicts in Prison In a European context, Sweden is known for its repressive drug policy (Lenke and Ohlson, 1998; Tham, 1998). The drug policy is one of the major explanations for the many changes of prison conditions and prison policies since the early 1980s. A growing number of people have been sentenced to imprisonment for drug offences, the lengths of sentences for drug offences have increased and various aspects of the prison regime have been ‘toughened’." [1] Compare above,

"The action plan taken by the Parliament in 2002 included the two goals that fewer people should start taking drugs and more people should quit taking them. It was also stated that more people should get involved in the work against drugs and that 10 million Euros should be allocated to treatment activities in prisons for those prisoners with a drug problem."[2] "Nuvarande handlingsplan: Den nuvarande handlingsplanen betonar vikten av att fängelser är narkotikafria.."(The current national plan of action: The current action plan stresses the importance of prisons are drugfree.) Government proposal 2005/06:30 page 113 Prime minister Göran Persson

The criminal health care organization has been through drug effort adapted to increasingly deal with drug addiction clients. The prison and Probation Board should continue the special narcotics effort and can adjust future activity after the experience and the knowledge gathered since the drug effort began in 2002[Government proposal 2005/06:30 New action plan for drugs page 108Dala11a (talk) 15:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Observation A, except that I question the relevance of the specific reference to the United States, which has nothing to do with the subject of this article. With respect to Observation B, I think I could make an argument for the "Drug-related public expenditure" section being relevant, since it demonstrates the level of commitment of the govenment of Sweden to its drug policies. On the other hand, I agree with your assessment that the "Drug related death" section is defacto commentary. As such, it is non-encyclopedic, and does not belong in the article. Mmyotis ^{^^o^^} 21:20, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

• Mmyotis, I can't agree with your assessement of the "Drug related death" section; three of the major references discuss this issue in varying detail: (1)Sweden's Sucessful Drug Policy, UN Report, (2) The Swedish Drug Control System, (3) Looking at the UN Smelling a Rat, Peter Cohen, CEDRO, and An in-depth review and analysis, Tim Boekhout van Solinge. The latter also gets into great detail about imprisonment. I can't see the logic of disincluding any of the results and costs of the Policy, including imprisonment. I think that the remaining issue is what is pertinent to the imprisonment section. I think that expansion from the deleted section is proper based on the rich information in van Solinge's work. --Kevin Murray (talk) 21:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
• I think that inclusion of comparative statistics for other nations is valid, to put the results in perspective. Since a plurality of the readers of English WP live in the US, that statistic has great meaning. This topic of this article is notable far from the borders of Sweden, since Sweden is being held up as a model of success, in a world where drug prohibitions are apparently failing. --Kevin Murray (talk) 22:00, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

"I can't see the logic of disincluding any of the results and costs of the Policy, including imprisonment." I'm sorry, but as the article by Peter Cohen states, none of those references you cited demonstrates a definitive correlation between the drug policy and any result, either positive or negative. The claims of the UN report are the unscientific opinion of a department that's tasked with proving its relevancy. If you can find a credible third party reference that documents a correlation between statistics and policy, then that would certainly be relevant and I would argue for its inclusion. But you won't because there is no reliable scientific data to supports the contention that the effectiveness of a particular social policy (in this case a drug policy) can be show through the analysis of statistics that represent either the results or the costs of the policy. Attempts by editors to use the statistics in the way that it is being done here (i.e. by provide defacto commentary) amount to original research and represent a non-neutral point of view. The same applies to the inclusion of comparitive statistics. If there is a reliable third party reference that claims that a cross-cultural comparitive analysis of drug use statistics can demonstrate the relative success or failure of a drug policy, then I am all for including the comparitive statistic in this article. Unfortunately there is no such reference. To claim such a correlation is original research and represents an editor's POV and should therefore not be included. This is my logic. Defacto commentary is original research and represents an editor's POV.

If it is still felt that the material should be included, then the contraindicating material must also be included for a balanced POV. I personally think that this will simply muddle up what should be a simple article on the Drug Policy of Sweden with an unnecessary restating of the controversy already discussed in the lead.Mmyotis ^{^^o^^} 23:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

'Mmyotis You wrote "If you can find a credible third party reference documents that a correlation between statistics and policy"' What is it then possible to write about in the WP. The entire article war on drugs is filled with complaints about everything linked with The war on drugs. I have not seen restrictions for that. If I interpret your demands strict as can articles on drug policy only contain lists of the laws of the area. The Swedish Riksdag adopted action plan includes action on issues that go beyond the laws for drugs. No government in the world will, in a strict scientific sense be able to prove that each of these areas have a positive effect on the number of drug abusers. But anyway, it is in fact so that the Swedish Riksdag highlights a number of areas by mention them in their action plan. Your requirements mean, if I interpret it strictly, that these areas can not be mentioned in the WP today, maybe at best a in a few decades. Then perhaps more research can show which areas have positive effect. I do not share such an idea of what may be written in WP. Dala11a (talk) 01:49, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Kriminalvården means, depending on the context, either The Prison Authority, the work on prisoner's health care or preventive work carried out by any part of the The Prison Authority (including prisoner's on conditional release). Even if one don't understand Swedish it is easy to find that the word Kriminalvården is used about 100 times in the proposal for the Action plan of 2006. Prop 2005/06:30Prop 2005/06:30Dala11a (talk) 07:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Dala11a, the efficacy of the drug policy of Sweden is discussed in the lead of the article and I have no problem with that. My concern is that the debate has not been resolved and should not become the focus of the article. An article on war on drugs sounds like the perfect place for discussing the efficacy of various drug policies. If you feel it is important to lay out the facts as the experts see them specifically with respect to the drug policy of Sweden, I have no problem with that. The restriction is that it should be done by referencing authoritative studies and it should be done in a balanced manner with all sides being represented. If that’s what you want to do, how about creating a section entitled, “Evidence for the efficacy of Sweden’s drug policy” and putting it there? Mmyotis ^{^^o^^} 12:49, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The article war on drugs is today is already quite long so there is probably no place there. Probably claims like less relvant. The creation of an article "Evidence of ..." will not solve the conflict because it immediately will be a discussion of what counts as evidence.Dala11a (talk) 13:45, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

My point about the article "war on drugs" is that it is a natural place for a presentation of the evidence for and against different drug policies. Just to be clear, I was not suggesting the creation of a new article, only a section within this one. What would be the problem with a discussion of what counts as evidence? That's pretty essential when there is no consensus amongst professionals in the field. Mmyotis ^{^^o^^} 15:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion closed It seems that we really have more than two editors in dispute and rather complex issues to resolve, thus this is beyond the scope of 3O. I lean toward inclusion of the imprisonment section, but there is a serious concern of synthesizing primary research from the publihed data, thus stating or implying a conclusion not yet supported by an independent verifiable source. However, I recommend that this issue be submitted to informal mediation. I would be happy to participate as a party to the mediation if no one sees a conflict of interest since I joined this discussion through a request for dispute resolution. Thanks for all of the cooperation. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:34, 22 May 2008 (UTC)