Immigration from developing countries has changed Swedish society in such a way that a country once considered among the safest and most egalitarian in the world has become a haven for violent drug gangs. This is obviously an unfortunate situation for Swedes, but it seems that Finns are not unaffected either.
The Finnish media company MTV3 published today information received from the police indicating that, except for one, all of the recent violent incidents in Oulu, located on Finland's west coast, are related to drug trafficking. Oulu is a large city in its region, with more than 200,000 inhabitants. It is located near the freely trafficked Tornio border station at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea and therefore acts as a kind of drug trade hub through which drugs are distributed further—if they are not sold in the city already.
However, the Finnish media, as usual, remain silent about the fact that the Swedish drug trade has practically entirely shifted to immigrants from the Middle East or Africa, or their descendants. And thus, it is very much an immigration issue as well.
The Finnish police have said some time ago that they have been largely able to prevent the landing of Swedish criminal gangs, but after the incidents in Oulu, one must ask whether they are now failing in this task. This may be hinted at by the police officer interviewed in the MTV3 article, who directed his words to politicians: "more resources should be allocated to preventing drug-related crimes."
However, it must also be noted that drug trafficking would not occur in Sweden or Finland if there were no market for it. And those markets are not an immigration issue, but largely a result of a wealthy middle class increasingly shifting from alcohol to other substances. It is precisely they who can afford the recreational use of drugs like cocaine, thereby maintaining the most profitable branch of the drug business.
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