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In this chapter, Tobias Kammersgaard, Esben Houborg, Thomas Søgaard, and Sidsel Schrøder provide an account of the frst police-led diversion scheme in Denmark for young people caught in possession of illicit drugs. Based on survey, interview, and focus group data, the authors reveal that referral to treatment and social services was viewed by police ofcers as ‘another tool in the toolbox’ instead of an alternative to criminal sanctions. As a result, it is suggested that the diversion scheme is indicative of a new dual approach to policing youth drug use, which involves the use of traditional punitive deterrence in combination with demand or harm reduction measures. The authors also engage with the concept of ‘treatmentality’ (Jöhncke 2009) to explain why even progressive forms of drugs policing might still maintain a range of problematic assumptions about drug use and the appropriateness of treatment interventions.

The chapter presents a case study of how police and low-threshold social and harm reduction services went from being opponents to partners in a joint effort to reduce drug-related harm associated with an open drug scene in Copenhagen. Using the concept of ‘policy network’ (Carlsson 2000) and actor-network theory (Latour 1993), Esben Houborg, Tobias Kammersgaard, and Thomas Søgaard explore the work that went into interesting and enrolling local actors into collective action. Aside from providing insights into the networking processes involved in the development of harm reduction policing, the authors also show how the scheme created new ways of working for the various actors involved and made new types of action possible. The chapter shows that there does not have to be a contradiction between policing and harm reduction, which has often been the case in this area of drug policy.

Der findes forskellige skadesreducerende tilbud til stofbrugere i de fleste danske kommuner uden for de største byer. Men i hvilket omfang stofbrugere benytter sig af og har adgang til tilbuddene, varierer dog. Det skaber ulighed i brugen af skadesreducerende hjælp som fx heroinbehandling og livreddende overdosisbehandling.

The earliest empirical studies on cannabis cultivation focused on large-scale, commercially oriented growers (Weisheit, 1991; Bovenkerk & Hogewind, 2002), or covered rather small samples (Hough et al., 2003). These studies often based their conclusions on police data, and may lead to false perceptions of the prevalence of different types of growers and growing operations and related criminal behaviours (Wilkins & Casswell, 2003), with important consequences for future policy choices. The Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium (GCCRC) is a group of researchers interested in better understanding domestic cannabis cultivation, especially by small-scale growers. In 2011, given the absence of any significant international comparative research, the GCCRC developed the (semi-)standardized International Cannabis Cultivation Questionnaire (ICCQ 1.0) designed to facilitate international comparisons of small-scale cultivation. However, the cannabis policy landscape has changed since 2011, with medical and recreational schemes moving forward in multiple countries. We therefore have many questions about how these new policy settings may be influencing home cannabis growers. In response to the shifting policy landscape, the GCCRC launched their second global cannabis cultivation questionnaire in 2021. The overall aims are twofold; (1) to describe various aspects of small-scale domestic cannabis cultivation; and (2) to conduct comparative analysis of cannabis cultivation across countries and with the original dataset from 2012.

Udsatte stofbrugere i København lever i risikofyldte miljøer. Det er vigtigt at kende de sociale, politiske og materielle faktorer i miljøer, der belaster stofbrugere, for at kunne hjælpe dem. Mindst lige så afgørende for hjælpen er det dog at forstå, hvilke ressourcer og muligheder der kan skabes i lokalmiljøet.