Swedish drug policy has been debated more and more frequently in recent years. Recently, among other things, the Swedish Municipalities and Regions, SKR, proposed that the actual criminalization of their own use should be investigated - something a majority of the social committee also supported, according to a survey from SVT News.

“Extremely Joyful”

The question of evaluating politics has also been driven by the Center Party and the Left Party for a long time.

- It is extremely gratifying that the Social Committee has supported the Center Party's proposal. Swedish substance abuse treatment has in many ways been a failure, where too few people receive care. The fact that we have now reached a political consensus on developing legislation that is based on people's right to care for people with dependents is in many ways a historic decision, says Anders W Jonsson, temporary party leader for the Center Party.

Karin Rågsjö, the Left Party spokesperson for health issues, is also happy after today's decision.

- It feels fantastic. I hadn't thought of this just six months ago. We have been pushing this issue for so long and in the beginning we were completely alone. That we now have a consensus on how serious it is that so many people die each year is important. And that we agreed to raise the level of knowledge in the matter and that the policy should be based on research and evidence and that we should work with injurious measures, something that has previously been almost forbidden to say.

Zero Vision on Drug Mortality

The evaluation that the Social Committee has now set out to do is to evaluate the policy in general and that the aim is to investigate whether the current policy is compatible with "evidence, proven care and harm minimization".

The Social Committee has also agreed on a letter that aims to establish a zero tolerance and a zero vision regarding drug-related deaths.

The question of the actual criminalization of its own practice, which was run through 1988 and has not been evaluated since then, is not specifically mentioned in the document to which the eight parties in the social committee agreed, since the matter lies with the Justice Committee.