Brukarinflytandets utveckling i den svenska narkotikapolitiken 1965-2004

Abstract

The Development of User Influence on Swedish Drug Policy 1965- 2004. This article investigates the influence of Swedish drug users on Swedish drug policy during the period 1965-2004. The main focus is on public policy, i.e. the policy-making of parliament, government, and key government departments and agencies.Both the users' processual influence, that is the degree and the way in which users participate in the decisionmaking process, as well as the users' substantial influence, or the degree to which the drug policy produces results that are in the interest of the users, are studied.The processual influence was srudied by reviewing user influence within the framework for public drug policy inquiries conducted during this period.The substantial influence was studied by evaluating the development of the Swedish drug policy, using a catalogue of key user issues (based on aninternational comparison of various user organizations) as a yard stick.The results indicate that user influence over public drug policy generally speaking has been extremely limited.Furthermore, as far as can be judged, this influence seems to have diminished over time,a development which has been similar for processual and substantial influence alike.