New steps towards a Norwegian drug reform? Three recent Supreme Court cases concerning sentencing for drug crimes

Abstract

Our previous article ‘Status report: A Norwegian decriminalisation of use and possession of drugs?’ in Volume 9 no. 1 of Bergen Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice described the situation of the drug reform as of June 2021. At that time, of our last report, it was hard to predict the future development within this area. The Parliament’s deliberations did not result in any on decriminalistion of use and possession of drugs, nor on any threshold values for differentiating the sentencing. Two of the three political parties that rejected the proposed reform, the Labour Party and the Centre Party, are now in power.1 A more restricted reform has been suggested, but not (yet, at least) proposed for the Parliament. A much-debated issue is to what extent section 98 of the Norwegian Constitution, stating that ‘[a]ll people are equal under the law’ and ‘[n]o human being must be subject to unfair or disproportionate differential treatment’, allows for decriminalisation only for specific groups, that is; for drug addicts.