RNS fuels political populism, the Big Brother state and system-threatening crime

Riksförbundet Narkotikafritt Samhälle, RNS, wants to present itself as a responsible civic movement. In reality, RNS is an ideological pressure cooker for moral panic, zero tolerance and more control. They claim to fight crime, while defending the very policy that keeps the entire cannabis market in criminal hands. That is why it must be said plainly: RNS has blood on its hands.

Cannabis.se has previously shown how RNS has polluted the debate for years by attacking reform, harm reduction and more humane ways forward. That history is not a closed chapter. It continues today through drug testing, dog searches in schools and deeper influence inside old drug-policy institutions.

RNS built politics on punishment and control

RNS’s history is a map of how Sweden ended up in today’s dead end. On the organisation’s own website, under its history section, RNS itself highlights the 1984 petition to criminalise consumption, the 1988 consumption ban and the 1993 legal change that gave police the right to use urine and blood samples to prove use.

That is not care. It is surveillance. RNS helped normalise the idea that the state should hunt people for what they have in their bodies. The result was not a drug-free society. The result was a society where users are treated with suspicion, where the police get stuck picking low-hanging fruit, and where criminal networks control the market.

Cannabis is the most common illegal drug in Sweden and has been estimated to account for 45 percent of annual turnover. Billions that are an important source of income for criminal gangs financing deadly violence.

When RNS blocks legalisation, decriminalisation and regulation, they help cement the very black market they claim to oppose. That is the real populism: shouting that “drug users feed the gangs” while defending the system that allows the gangs to keep selling.

Prodia and profitable zero tolerance

The connection to Prodia makes the picture even dirtier. Prodia sells drug tests to workplaces, including testing at recruitment, random checks and suspicion-based testing. The company also markets support with alcohol and drug policies, legally robust analyses and implementation of drug testing. Its CEO is Sabina Karlsson.

Prodia lists RNS as one of its selected partners and describes such partnerships as a way to create greater impact for reduced drug use and safer workplaces and communities. The same partner page also includes Narkopodden, which is run by RNS.

This is where ideology and business interests meet. RNS sells the moral panic. Prodia sells the tools. The harder zero tolerance is cemented, the larger the market becomes for tests, policies, certifications and control systems.

Prodia is also giving away Pelle Olsson’s 8 Myths About Cannabis 5.0 free of charge and uses the book as an argument for “structured work with drug testing”. The page also highlights Prodia’s MRO physician Johannes Kriisa, and Prodia writes that THC continues to increase in its MRO report.

Pelle Olsson is not a neutral public educator. He is an RNS veteran and one of the Swedish cannabis debate’s most persistent propagandists. When his pamphlet is distributed by a company that makes money from more drug testing, the message is obvious: more fear, more control, more business.

Narkotikafri Skola turns children into objects of control

RNS’s project Narkotikafri Skola, “Drug-Free School”, has been running since 2008 and, according to the project’s own description, aims to spread methods, routines and knowledge for schools’ preventive work. In practice, it is a channel for bringing zero-tolerance suspicion into the classroom.

Marie Sjögren, founder of Narkotikahundgruppen, is a board member of RNS and works with Narkotikafri Skola. She provides training for schools on issues including drug policies, action plans, random testing and narcotics searches with dogs.

This is exactly the type of zero tolerance that leads municipalities to start buying symbolic politics. In Eskilstuna, the municipality paid around than SEK 50,000 for drug searches with dogs at municipal upper-secondary schools, even though police stated that equivalent preventive searches could have been carried out free of charge.

This is what zero tolerance looks like when it lands in reality. Schools get dog searches. Companies get to invoice. Politicians get to pose. Students learn that the adult world meets them with suspicion instead of knowledge, support and trust.

Jessica Vikberg, chair of RNS, elected to CAN’s board

Finally, there is CAN, the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs. CAN is not just a knowledge centre. It is also a former temperance government agency, today with around 50 member organisations, where RNS has been a member since 1971. CAN itself writes that member organisations are represented on the board and at the annual meeting.

RNS has also stated on Facebook that its chair has been elected to CAN’s board in connection with the annual meeting. RNS’s own federal board lists Jessica Vikberg as chair.

This is serious. Jessica Vikberg is not just any representative. She is the public face of RNS, editor of På gränsen — a magazine for customs officers — host of Narkopodden and one of the clearest voices for continued zero tolerance. When such an actor takes a seat in CAN’s boardroom, the question of CAN’s independence becomes impossible to dismiss.

CAN conducts the annual national school survey on alcohol, narcotics, doping, tobacco and gambling among students in year 9 and the second year of upper-secondary school. The survey has been conducted in year 9 since 1971 and is funded by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.

This is not just any survey. It is a recurring source of evidence that shapes the debate about young people, drugs and risk. When RNS gains even closer influence over CAN’s environments, it strengthens a politicised knowledge apparatus where restrictive special interests can continue to shape how the problems are described.

Defund CAN and break the power of zero tolerance

CAN should be defunded in its current form. The work that is actually needed, such as data collection, reporting and analysis, should be moved to the Public Health Agency of Sweden under clear public-agency responsibility. Sweden needs factual public-health statistics, not an old temperance-influenced power structure where RNS and similar organisations can keep dominating the conversation.

RNS claims to stand for safety. But its politics have given Sweden more surveillance, more drug testing, more symbolic politics and a continued illegal market where criminal networks earn billions. It is time to stop letting the zero-tolerance lobby call this responsibility.

Responsibility means reducing harm. Responsibility means taking the market away from the gangs. Responsibility means replacing moral panic with regulation, care, harm reduction and honest information. RNS offers the opposite. They offer more of what has already failed.