It's appaling because it's not ONLY illegal to be under the influence of a drug, it's even illegal to have it in your system. Bear in mind that cannabis stays in your system for up to 4 weeks after ingestion, which means that if you're driving, you get pulled over and for some reason they decide to conduct a urinal/blood test on you, you can get convicted for a narcotics offense. I'm from the US but I moved here when I was 16 - and I think the laws in this country are absolutely askew. It's like a throwback to 1940's America, and for a "progressive" country such as Sweden, that's really strange. One other thing to add is that there's no such thing as civil rights here. The police pretty much have full authority to do whatever they want based on their own judgment. Let's say you get pulled over, right? If the police, for any reason, suspect you're high, actually, they wouldn't even need to suspect it - they can just say that they suspect it, they can detain you and take you in for a drug test. There are no rights - the only rights you have are the ones given to you based on the police officer's own judgment. Granted, police brutality isn't a big issue because police here are trained to discuss and solve situations with words, and only to use force when there is no other way. This is why you get cops who barely know how to handle an ASP baton, such as these jokers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlzI3lttcJ0 I don't know about you, but in a country where carrying anything for self-defense is a crime, and you have to resort to trusting officer's in the video above.. Hmm. I'm not sure that makes me feel safe. I have to laugh at your comment saying "it works quite well". What planet are you from? Over 1 million Swedes use marijuana, and 2 hours from where I live, in Christiania, Copenhagen, I can buy however much of any quantity I would like and take it over the Öresund bridge with virtually 0% risk of getting apprehended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l3yHeZbYzo I highly advise you to check this out, because if you think the drug laws in this country are working quite well, you obviously haven't dug deep enough.