We Cannot Punish Our Way Out of a War That Feeds the Monster

Sweden is in a state of permanent escalation. Every new gangster shooting or bombing is followed by demands for tougher measures. Every new drug is met with calls for expanded police powers. But a society cannot escalate indefinitely without eventually beginning to consume itself.

A militarized war on drugs always moves in the same direction: concentration of power, exceptionalist thinking, and a gradual erosion of due process. In Colombia and Mexico, journalists, politicians, and police officers have been murdered as the fight has overtaken the state. It always begins with the rhetoric of war. It continues with special legislation. And it ends with democracy yielding to the promise of order.

It feels symptomatic when member of swedish parliament Katja Nyberg — a police officer on leave from the NOA (Police HQ) and formerly a narcotics investigator in Stockholm’s anti rave commission — is herself caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She has been the right-wing party Swedish Democrats’ public face on policing issues. The symbolism is brutal. The moral standard-bearer turns out to be human. Just another drug user? Funded by taxpayers.

At the same time, ordinary Swedes binge on blue-light crime dramas on television, worshipping the thick blue line. We consume crime-fighting as entertainment and confuse dramaturgy with politics. On screen, there are clear heroes and villains. In reality, the lines are far more blurred.

When the Social Democrats’ justice policy spokesperson Therese Carvalho warns that Sweden risks becoming mafia-ruled and opens the door to “mafia laws,” it is yet another step in the same old populist tango. More exceptions. More special rules. Less proportionality. The fundamental question is never seriously asked: can we really punish our way out of this?

Look at New York and the so-called Rockefeller drug laws of the 1970s. Life sentences. No mercy for drug crimes. Symbolic politics wrapped in ironclad rhetoric. Were people locked up? Yes. Did drugs disappear? No. Instead, the prison population exploded and entire communities were torn apart. Eventually, the laws were dismantled.

Meanwhile, we see how the folksy so-called fox, Rawa Majid, freely projects his capital of violence into Sweden from abroad. When kingpins can operate remotely with geopolitical connections — including alleged links to terrorism on behalf of Iran, according to media reports — the limitations of the state are exposed. The long arm of the law is never long enough.

We thus face a double threat: organized crime that is increasingly system-challenging — and a political reflex to respond to every threat with more power for the state. In that crossfire, due process becomes the first casualty.

What is truly dangerous is not that we fight crime. It is that we do so without evaluation. Without measuring impact. Without daring to question the core assumption that more repression is always the answer. With every new tightening of the screws, the boundary of what is considered reasonable shifts further.

The question is not whether we should combat crime. The question is how — and at what cost.

When will we wake up and properly evaluate our drug policy? In our eagerness to crush the monster, we ourselves become one — and drive democracy into the ditch.