Swedish drug policy on municipal level : A document study on municipal housings contributions for people with substance abuse and dependence problematics

The aim of this study was to investigate how Swedish drug policy is shaped at a municipal level, regarding problems and solutions for housing contributions for people with addiction and dependence problems. The study was conducted through a qualitative method in the form of a document study. The documents that were examined consisted of the national guidelines for support and care for people with addiction and dependence problematics, produced by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. Furthermore, three regulatory documents from three different Swedish municipalities were examined. The collected data from each document were then analyzed using thematic analysis. The thematic analysis produced themes within the data, which in turn became the results of the study. The results of the study shows that there are some similarities between national and municipal level regarding the problems and solutions that are presented. However, there are also distinct differences. The conclusions of this study are that the regulatory documents appear, to some extent, to have been influenced by the National Board of Health and Welfares recommendations. At the same time, the differences in the data may imply that the municipalities are entitled to form policies based on local problems and solutions to these problems. Thereby the final conclusion of the study is that Swedish drug policy do influence policies at municipal level, but that the deviations that can be found in the local regulatory documents indicate that the municipalities to some extent are independent of national policies.