– It really shook me, says Grønn Ungdom leader Tobias Stokkeland to NRK.
The 25-year-old meets NRK in the sun outside the national meeting hotel of the Green Party in Fornebu. He is about to finish a speech he has dreaded giving.
EXCITED: Stokkeland is excited about how the speech will be received.
Photo: Roy Pettersen / Roy Pettersen
On Saturday morning, Stokkeland will take the podium and tell what happened when he and some student friends were on the town in Johannesburg in South Africa a few years ago.
– I overdosed on a drug I thought was amphetamine, but turned out to be a South African street drug that has been described as “poor man’s cocaine”. It’s scary to think that we took something we didn’t really know what it was, says Stokkeland.
– How do you look at it in retrospect?
– No, it was stupid of us. We thought we had control, but we didn’t.
Panic
The incident he tells about happened back in 2018, when Stokkeland was 19 years old. He attended the last part of high school in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). During a holiday in Johannesburg with a large group of student friends, something went wrong.
– We were in town and were going to try an intoxicant, of which I did not notice any particular effect, to begin with. I continued to take, more than the others, and eventually noticed that I have a very high heart rate and chest pain. When we got to my friend’s house, I had an extreme panic attack.
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– And what scares me the most in retrospect is that no one asked for help. It was about us being afraid of being caught, afraid of the consequences of what we had done.
– But healthcare personnel have a duty of confidentiality. There is no danger that they will notify the police?
– No, but unfortunately there are far too few who understand. The attitude when taking an illegal drug is that you should not tell anyone.
Will decriminalize
Tobias Stokkeland says he wants to come forward for two reasons: Firstly to highlight how dangerous it can be to use drugs and how important it is to contact help.
It is so important for him to give new momentum to the drug debate here at home. He decided to speak publicly about drug use before the other youth party leaders came forward this week.
– I was such an experimental youth. And it was about to go really wrong because I was afraid of being caught. I want us to stop punishing drug use and rather help those who need it.
WILL DECRIMINALIZATION: Tobias Stokkeland in Grønn Ungdom
Photo: Roy Pettersen / Roy Pettersen
– Won’t it be able to help get young people on the right track that Are the police involved?
– If the police suspect drug use, they can refer for help. I don’t think it’s a legal issue that needs to be resolved in court.
– But the fact that it is forbidden raises the threshold for trying, right?
– If what you fear is getting caught, then the only thing you need to do is not get caught. To hide it or not to be open about it. It is a poor argument for not using drugs, but a very strong argument for many not to contact help.
– But what you are talking about happened in South Africa. What kind of relevance does it have for the Norwegian drug debate?
– It’s the same drug policy then. And the same could very well have happened in Norway.
Has stopped
Stokkeland says he has previously tried hashish and smoked marijuana, but that he has not used illegal drugs after he returned home from his study stay in Eswatini and South Africa in 2018.
He says he has never been in contact with the police or the healthcare system related to the use of drugs.
– How many times have you used drugs?
– I used some cannabis over a short period of time. And then I found out that I reacted a little badly to that. Beyond that, five or six times in my lifetime.
– What kind of fabric then?
– I have tried MDMA twice. And I’ve tried psychedelic mushrooms like that twice. And then I tried this drug here then. Once.
– You showed off a joint during the youth party leader debate in Arendal a few years ago. Have you yourself contributed to making the use of drugs harmless?
– No, when I showed that joint, I also explained that it may contain dangerous substances. You don’t know the strength of what is being sold. The illegal market makes cannabis much more dangerous than it needs to be.
– How has the Johannesburg experience affected your relationship with drugs?
– I didn’t have a big drug problem or anything like that, but at least I got an understanding that drugs can be quite dangerous.
