The 1960sTraffic education and the rise of drug-related crime

The Finnish car market was deregulated in 1962, resulting in more traffic and more road accidents. At the beginning of the 1960s, about 600 people died in such accidents each year, but by the end of the decade, the annual death toll had risen to about a thousand.

Finns were growing increasingly concerned about traffic safety. There was a lack of speed limits, and the public wanted the police to prevent reckless driving. At the beginning of the 60s, however, only half of the 256 police districts had police cars of their own. Donations from the public enabled the National Traffic Police to purchase cars and traffic monitoring equipment. In 1967, radio and TV personality Niilo Tarvajärvi led a money-raising campaign by which the public donated 58 so-called Tarva cars to the National Traffic Police.

Increased safety was a key goal of the preventive work of the police. Schoolchildren were taught about traffic rules using so-called traffic towns, educational posters and puppet theatre. Public service announcements on radio, television and fairs were used to reach out to the public with information that could increase safety on the roads.

Illicit drugs had until the 1960s mainly been used by wounded veterans and a small group of well-to-do members of the elite, but now the habit was being picked up by young people, resulting in a market for drugs. Finland did not yet have modern laws against drugs, but as the United Nations adopted the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961, the Finnish authorities had to turn stricter. As the first major cases of drug trafficking were discovered in the mid-1960s, the Finnish police still had very little experience of investigating drug-related crime. The use of illicit drugs was outlawed, and the new drug legislation of 1966 made Finnish drug policy one of the strictest in Europe. The law was not only concerned with illicit drugs, but the abuse of prescription drugs as well. A narcotics squad was formed at the National Bureau of Investigation in 1968 and another one at the Helsinki Police Department the following year. The drug squad in Helsinki included the country’s first narcotics dog. Education on the investigation of drug-related crimes was offered to the local police across the country.

The sale of medium-strength beer in grocery stores was legalised in 1969, and public intoxication was decriminalised. The illegal production and sale of alcohol decreased over time.

The amount of youth-led protests was increasing, and the police had to learn how to handle this new kind of radicalism. In the summer of 1962, the Soviet-sponsored World Federation of Democratic Youth held its World Festival of Youths and Students in Helsinki. In response, the USA and the UK sponsored a festival of their own, and clashes ensued. The police put down the riots with batons, horses and teargas. During the protests against the Vietnam War in 1966 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, rioters engaged in both active and passive resistance against the police. The kind of street anarchism and violence prevalent in other countries did not, however, occur in Finland.