In the Dead of Night, a Danish Commune Cracks Down on Drug Gangs

Copenhagen's hippie Christiania neighborhood is famous for its open-air cannabis market. Now, residents are fighting back against criminal groups that have taken over the trade. By Sune Engel Rasmussen | Photographs by Janus Engel for The Wall Street Journal Aug. 22, 2023 Tap story

Christiania, a commune in Denmark’s capital, is one of Northern Europe’s biggest tourist attractions. It was established in 1971 as an anticapitalist haven based on self-governance, free thinking and legalized cannabis. But it has changed in recent years.

Organized criminals have pushed out most of the commune's residents from the lucrative cannabis trade. After a spate of increasingly violent incidents, including several killings, many residents have had enough.

In August, a group of residents gathered to execute a risky pre-dawn operation aimed at shutting down Pusher Street, a pedestrian strip where cannabis is sold from plywood stalls.

The locals used shipping containers and concrete walls to block off entrances into the street, hours before drug dealers would arrive to begin the day’s business.

With criminal groups repeatedly clashing over Pusher Street, the freetown has become a battleground for Denmark’s largest organized gangs. Read more

Residents didn’t harbor illusions that the action would permanently close down Pusher Street, but said they hoped it would serve as an invitation to the police and politicians to get serious about trying.

“This action is taken in the hope of freeing Christiania from the tyranny of gangs and hard-core criminals," they said. “We are ordinary people who have to go to work and pack lunchboxes for our children."

The showdown is a consequence of a Danish, and European, drug market that is growing larger and more violent. It also marks a turning point for one of Europe’s most radical and enduring social experiments.

Fleur Frilund, 27, moved into Christiania about six years ago. She was attracted to its proximity to nature and its embrace of freethinkers. “It’s a radically different way of living, compared to the big-city mentality just on the other side of the fence,” she said.

Christiania has survived at odds with the law since it was founded, when a band of hippies occupied an abandoned military barrack. Read more

Christiania's early cannabis trade was driven by hippies transporting drugs from Asia to Copenhagen in beat-up Volkswagen vans. Today, about $150 million worth of cannabis flows each year through Pusher Street.

Some gang members openly use hard drugs, carry weapons and employ minors, all of which contravene the commune’s rules. “They violate the moral code of Christiania," said Emmerik Warburg, who works for the freetown's self-governing administration.

Produced by Elizabeth Culliford Photo Editor: Marina Vitaglione Read the full story