Danish cannabis policy revisited: Multiple framings of cannabis use in policy discourse

Recently, many countries have changed their cannabis policy by introducing medical cannabis and/or by moving toward different forms of legalisation and/or decriminalisation. Researchers have thus argued that traditional notions of cannabis as a singular and coherent object, are gradually being replaced by perspectives that highlight the multiple ontological character of cannabis. At the same time, there is growing recognition that drug policy is not a unitary phenomenon. Based on the idea that drug policy is composed by multiple “policy areas” each defined by particular notions of what constitutes the relevant policy “problem”, this article explores how Danish cannabis policy is composed of different co-existing framings of cannabis use; as respectively a social problem, a problem of deviance, an organised crime problem, a health- and risk problem and as a medical problem. While the international trend seems to be that law-and-order approaches are increasingly being replaced by more liberal approaches, we show how Denmark, on an overall level, seems to be moving in the opposite direction: Away from a lenient decriminalisation policy of cannabis use and towards more repressive approaches. We demonstrate how the prominence of discursive framings of cannabis use as a “problem of deviance” and as “a driver of organised crime”, has been key to this process.