Where should the open market for illegal drugs be?

The police choose every single day that the open market for drugs should be in Greenland.

This is a debate post. Any opinions expressed in the text are the responsibility of the writer. If you want to participate in the debate, you can read how here.

We who live in Grønlan have been tired of having Norway’s largest open market for illegal drugs and accompanying crime right outside our windows for quite some time. Everyone here welcomes both more police and more prevention.

But there are a couple of key points that are missing from the debate related to the recent episodes of violence:

• No matter how much police resources are deployed, there will be a market for illegal drugs in Oslo – whether hashish is legalized or not – as district neighbor and Young Conservative leader Ola Svenneby suggests.
• The market for illegal drugs will always be in the place where sellers and buyers are most at peace.

The police have made a choice

As long as the police allow sellers of illegal drugs to be more in peace in Greenland than in other central places in the city, it is that easy for the sellers to stay in Greenland.

In other words: The police choose every single day that the open market for drugs should be in Greenland.

It is therefore an active choice by the police and the municipality that the area in Oslo with perhaps the most vulnerable children and young people is the same place as the entire Greater Oslo open drug market.

It is an active choice that should never have been made.

We expect that the result of the increased efforts that are now being put in is that the police and the municipality will simply move the market for drug sales to a completely different place. Preferably somewhere else in the city where the sellers can be relatively more at peace than they want in Greenland in the future, so that the next time sales, conflicts and crime flourish it is simply not in our backyard anymore.

My tip

Thus, I would like to ask a question to police chief Ida Melbo Øystese and city council leader Erling Lae Solberg (H): Where in our city should the open market for illegal drugs be?

It is probably a difficult task, but my tip is to at least choose a place where there are many fewer children and young people living in persistently low-income households than in Greenland.