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• Addiction
- An artificially induced drive (html)
By Nils Bejerot, M.D. "When I first introduced my theory on addiction
as an artificially induced drive before an international audience
in...
• The
six day war in Stockholm (html)
The use of gas in the Swedish bank drama last August was widely
criticised. Here a consultant psychiatrist to the police, who was
in the bank throughout the affair, gives his explanation of the
strategy adopted.
About Nils Bejerot
Nils Bejerot was born on 21 September 1921 in Stockholm. Having
acquired his higher school certificate at an evening school, he
started his medical studies at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.
His involvement in political activities lead to many interruptions
in his studies. His deep interest in social and cultural issues
lead him to write the book Barn Serier Samhälle ("Children
Comics Society"; Swedish), published in 1954.
In 1954, while serving as deputy social medical officer at the Child
and Youth Welfare Board of the City of Stockholm, Bejerot diagnosed
the first case of juvenile intravenous drug abuse ever seen by any
public authority in Europe. In spite of his alarming report to the
Board, the incident did not lead to any official intervention. Bejerot
started working as social medical officer in Stockholm 1962. He
was consulting psychiatrist to the Stockholm Police Department from
1958 and consulting physician to the Stockholm Remand Prison from
1965. Later the became Research Fellow in drug dependence at the
Swedish National Medical Research Council, and then Reader in Social
Medicine at the Karolinska Institute.
When the Swedish "legal prescription experiment" was initiated in
the Spring of 1965, Bejerot started the "Injection Mark Study" at
the Remand Prison to monitor the spread of intravenous drug abuse
in Stockholm.
| He was able to show that the experiment (1965 -
1967) lead to a rapid increase in the level of drug abuse at large and
that the hopes of the proponents of the experiment that it would stop
both the spread of drug abuse and the drug-related delinquency of the
patients in the project had failed. When the level of drug abuse
dropped considerably during the nation-wide "Police Offensive" (which
started 1969), Bejerot was in the unique situation |
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of being able to make direct comparisons of the development of a drug
abuse epidemic during varying control regimens. He presented his
results in 1974 in the dissertation Drug Abuse and Drug Policy (English
translation 1975).
He was made Associate Professor in 1974 and was given the title of
Professor in 1979. Bejerot was a leading critic of the Swedish drug
control system, using epidemiological principles to argue for
comprehensive measures to prevent, detect and stop drug abuse. He was
one of the first to warn that the modern drug epidemics could become
serious threats to public health. His research covered such wide areas
as the epidemiology of drug abuse, the dynamics of drug dependence and
the anomalies of public welfare policy. In the early 1980s, he became
one of the "Top 10 opinion moulders" in Sweden. He wrote several books
on drug control. His bibliography, published in 1986, contains over 600
works.
Nils Bejerot died on 29 November 1988 after a long illness. The
memorial book Nils Bejerot – forskaren, folkupplysaren, pionjären
i kampen mot narkotika ("Nils Bejerot - The Scientist, the Popular
Educator and Pioneer in the Struggle Against Drugs"; Swedish) was
published in 1993 by The Nils Bejerot Memorial Fund.
Jonas Hartelius
© 2002 Nils Bejerots
Minnesfond
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