The Attorney General has introduced his own drug reform

The Attorney General has introduced his own drug reform, which goes far beyond that of the previous government.

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The Attorney-General writes in Aftenposten on 19 April that in the debate on drug crime one must be able to expect those who participate to “build on and communicate premises that are correct”.

But the Attorney General’s own premises fail on crucial points. The Attorney General’s letters of 9 April 2021 and 13 May 2022 on the police’s access to coercive drug use in drug cases are not based on current law, it is “new law”.

The interaction between small and large matters

The Attorney-General emphasized in his consultation opinion on the drug reform on 3 June 2020 that “a large number of major drug cases (have) started in small individual seizures”, and he warned that a lack of warrants would “could weaken the police’s work, both with street-level sales and with organized drug crime ».

At the time, the Attorney General must have believed that the interaction between small and large cases that he defended, and the practice in general, was in accordance with the applicable law.

On 20 December 2022, the Supreme Court heard the appeals against two judgments based on the 2021 letter being “new law”. The Supreme Court failed to take a position on the 2021 letter, if it had been “founded on current law”, there would not have been a problem.

One of the General Prosecutor’s premises is that “dealing with drugs for personal use is not given a high priority (…) the police’s investigative efforts must be aimed at serious drug crime”. Here, the Attorney General “forgets” the interaction between small and large cases.

Things develop along the way

Proportionality? It is well known that not least drug cases develop during the investigation. Behind every discovery of drugs there are other criminal offenses – sometimes very serious smuggling – which it is the police’s job to uncover.

The first findings may provide further clues and do not provide any framework for the case. If the police find one slice of mutton sausage injected with drugs, the “whole sausage” becomes the yardstick. Proportionality must be assessed against an unknown quantity.

A child pornography case does not stop with a single seizure, the “case” applies to the entire chain. If someone is arrested with a bottle of methanol alcohol, the police must use all coercive means to find the “man”. The parallel can be extended.

Introduced its own drug reform

The Attorney General’s 2022 letter is based on a far-fetched reality ex post consideration ex post considerationAfter the measure has ended that drug cases which “must be settled with an unconditional waiver of prosecution, do not form the basis for criminal procedural coercive measures, beyond the seizure of visible drugs”.

The police “on the street” cannot know what they will find and what the prosecution decision will be. Visibility is a completely “new” and unknown term invented by the Attorney General. It obviously cannot apply in other cases.

The Attorney General writes quite correctly that dealing with drugs has not been decriminalised, but the lack of enforcement means that the risk of being caught is minimal – the difference to decriminalization is only of academic interest. It is safe to deal with drugs on the street.

The Attorney General has introduced his own drug reform, which goes far beyond that of the previous government.