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This paper examines the reorganization of Finnish drug policy in the light of recent major changes. The analysis is inspired by writings of criminologist David Garland on crime control and governmental control strategies (Garland

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Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) have been established to reach high-risk people who use drugs (PWUDs) and reduce drug-associated harm. Despite effectiveness, their establishment requires strong advocacy and efforts since moral perspectives tend to prevail over health outcomes in many countries. DCRs have generally emerged as a local response to inadequate central government policy. Likewise, the initiative of the Municipality of Helsinki in 2018 opened up a discussion between central government, society, and local actors in Finland. This would be the first DCR in Finland, which makes the policy process and the progress of the initiative interesting for analysis. In this article, the identification of agents, structures of interactions, environmental challenges, and policy opportunities are analyzed within the framework of complexity theory. Our results show that the initiative faces policy barriers that have mainly arisen from the conceptualization of DCRs in moral frameworks that result in the prolongation of political and professional actors to take a position on DCRs.

Despite its relatively long history in the international drug policy field, the meaning of the term harm reduction is still disputed. From a description of the different actor-basedfootings of the international harm-reduction school of thought, the analysis concludes that the diverse conceptualizations of harm reduction are to be understood as interpretive frameworks that are functionally different according to the different types ofactors and their social and professional positions. Three epistemic fractions of harm reduction are recognized: a professional new public health fraction; a mutual-help and identity movement fraction of the drug users; and a globally oriented fraction. It is argued that, rather than one, the international harm-reduction school of thought is a policy community of the three epistemic fractions that are in dialogue with each other and thus are constantly redefining the meaning of harm reduction.