An inconsistency has been found between Nordic criminal policy and drug control policy. The general Nordic criminal policy requires rationality and humanism, thereby limiting penal solutions for some cases. However, for the drug policy, drugs must be strongly combated where the means are primarily penal. This article examines how this inconsistency has come about and what the consequences of these two opposite attitudes are. It describes and analyzes situations from the perspective of whether it can be considered as a sound drug policy, a sound criminal policy, and sound criminal law policy to use imprisonment as extensively as it is done in the area of drug control. The article begins with a description of how the drug policy has developed. This is followed by a short description of how penal legislation, rules of criminal procedure, and crime control have changed to combat drug crimes. The Nordic countries have had a sound tradition of keeping criminal political debates on a fairly high level, based on rational analysis, and of proposing well-founded suggestions for improvement of criminal legislation. It is important to reach the same high level in the debate concerning drug issues. Table, references