How sport helped to decrease drug use in Iceland

“If you play sports during your childhood and adolescence, it will probably be good. If not, you will at least save yourself from substance addiction. What could be better than that?”

With a certain amount of humor, this is how researcher Inga Dora summarizes one of the reasons why Iceland has achieved important results in sports competitions recently: a program to combat drug use.

The initiative, now called Planet Youth, began in 1997, when a group of researchers realized that the traditional strategy of teaching children that drugs are bad for their health was not working.

The group started studies to understand the factors that contributed to the consumption of narcotics. Developed strategies focused on small communities, integrating children in collective activities.

“If you ask a 7-year-old what he wants to be when he grows up, he will say teacher, pilot, firefighter. Not ‘drug user.’ Currently, 18-year-olds here drink less than 15-year-olds have been drinking for 20 years. Because we managed to delay the moment they take the first sip,” says Inga Dora to sheet.

In 1998, 42 percent of 15- and 16-year-old students had been drunk in the past 30 days. The number dropped to 7% in 2020. Of that same group, 23% smoked daily. In 2020, only 1%. Marijuana use dropped from 17% to 6% in the period.

And in this process, the group discovered that sport is one of the most effective tools. Even with an especially positive effect on children who live in a violent family environment — a fact directly related to substance use.

“If you asked me ten years ago, I would say that it is not possible to say that there is a cause and effect relationship between the practice of sports and the reduction of drug use. After our studies, I can confirm that yes, there is a cause and effect relationship. effect,” he says.

Paulo Silveira, from the Additions Observatory, explains that the key is in understanding that addiction is not chemical, but caused by social factors.

He cites, for example, the study by Bruce Alexander, who separated two groups of rats and placed one in individual cages and the other in a free environment. Offered cocaine to everyone. The caged nearly killed themselves; the others barely touched her.

Or the survey that found that, of US soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam, only 12.3% had difficulty stopping using the drug after returning home—4% of those soldiers had trouble quitting even with professional help.

The issue, concludes Silveira, is to integrate the individual into society.

“Sport works, first, because it works with all ages and all individuals. It integrates the individual in his collective and reproduces his own life, with rules, with recognition of individual performance at the same time that the individual works in his collective “, it says.

“It’s not the sport in isolation, it’s the sport with a social conscience. For a person to have the desired performance, they need dedication. And then other habits, such as the use of legal or illegal drugs, or unhealthy eating, start to get in the way”, complete.

Furthermore, the massive adhesion to the sport since youth has brought expressive results for Iceland.

At the 2016 Euro Cup, for example, the selection was the big sensation and reached the quarterfinals. It rose from the last positions to 18th in the FIFA rankings. In the 2018 World Cup, the nation of 330,000 inhabitants became the smallest country to compete in a World Cup.

It is important to remember that the focus of the program is the fight against drugs, not sports.

The secret, explains Silveira, is to create spaces for practicing sports that escape the idea of ​​private clubs and come closer to Paulo Freire’s concept of citizen school.

“These are schools that no longer have as an exclusive function the transmission of knowledge to have a sense of agglutination of society, where the community that attends the school will discuss their problems and develop solutions”, he says.

Iceland has created community meeting spaces where, among other things, there is sport.

“It’s not about looking for a potential new Ronaldo. It’s about giving children choices. If they can, they’ll choose the sport and they’re more likely to become athletes if they practice soccer, basketball and swimming in a pleasant and organized way,” says Inga.

“Children don’t plan to use drugs, but we are social beings. We, parents and policymakers, are responsible for creating circumstances in which they don’t need to use drugs.”

Today, Planet Youth is active all over the world. According to Inga, the initiative is applicable to the Brazilian reality, since its methodological principle is to work in small communities, in a way that is adaptable to local particularities—and in this sense, it could take advantage of the football passion.

Silveira highlights, first, a geographical obstacle: Iceland is an island the size of the city of Ponta Grossa (PR), while Brazil is almost the size of Europe.

“Our socioeconomic regime only survives because we are all educated to be addicts, that is, we have to consume permanently for the economy to grow,” he adds.

But at the end of his pencil, he remembers that a prisoner in Brazil costs the state 13 times more than a student. And Brazil has more than 160,000 arrested for drug trafficking.

However, he understands that there is a deep-rooted culture of the so-called war on drugs, which serves financial interests and makes it difficult for the population and governments to be convinced that the Icelandic strategy is efficient — the subject has already been debated in the Federal Congress, but it has never moved.

In global terms, Silveira highlights that the country is one of the main consumers of the billionaire world drug market.

Finally, he highlights that Covid-19 made the number of addictions rise worldwide. In the special edition of the Global Drug Survey (GDS) pandemic, Brazil had a 17.2% increase in marijuana use; 7.4% cocaine; 12.7% benzodiazepines (such as Diazepam) and 13.1% alcohol.

This proves that the current drug war needs to change, he says. Currently, the Observatory is negotiating partnerships with city halls or conglomerates, such as Consórcio Nordeste.

“We intend to create opportunities for the realization of this type of program here in Brazil. How? By working with interested communities to implement a program, organized by the population together with us, which can raise financial, professional and technological resources.”