The fact that there was a crack cocaine epidemic during this period is conveniently ignored. A critical examination of the official version of the development of abuse. In Swedish drug policy there are differing opinions on two crucial points. These differences concern cause and effect in regard to policy and the development of abuse. There are different opinions regarding time context, that is to say, when developments went in one direction or the other and to what extent this can be linked to differences in policy between the different periods.
Some facts are clear.
For instance the peak in the Swedish drug epidemic, according to all sources, occurred at the beginning of the 70's. That is 5-10 years before the new policy, which took all the credit for the dramatic decrease even though drug abuse was decreasing before the new policy had time to take effect. Another fact is that the decline that is used as evidence of reduced new recruitment to heavy drug abuse occurred abruptly at the end of the 1980's. That is more than five years after the new policy achieved full effect. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that it is only amongst the absolute youngest that a reduction can be seen to have occurred in the statistics of 1992 compared with those of 1979.