Ett Systembolag fast med narkotika - En kvalitativ textanalys av debatten gällande narkotikalegalisering

Sammanfattning: Drug abuse became a big social problem in Sweden during the 1960’s when the youth’s use of narcotics started to expand. The Swedish drug policy stands for total prohibition. All thing related to narcotics are illegal, to use, to smuggle, to produce, to hold and to buy. The aim of this study was to examine the Swedish drug policy and to examine how the members of the internet forum Flashback discussed the question of legalization. I have analyzed 5 threads from the section ”drug policy” and from those threads I could identify arguments that could be categorized under 5 different theses with argumentation-analysis, freedom of choice, that drug abuse is a sickness, the comparison to alcohol, if the government controlled the distribution of narcotics and the Swedish society relationship with narcotics. With critical discourse analysis and with the approach of normalization and stigmatization theory I analyzed the posts that argued for and against legalization. The results of the analyzation is that the members of Flashback seems to be part of a reversed society where the members who argue against legalization are part of a stigmatized group and the opinion of being pro legalization is normalized. The Swedish society, outside of Flashback, stigmatizes those who are pro legalization and that is what separates Flashback from the rest of the Swedish public.