Snoop Dogg has accused Swedish police of racial profiling, after he was stopped and briefly detained in the town of Uppsala on suspicion of possessing marijuana.
He told Swedish fans he would “never be back to your country, it’s been real”. Police pulled over the rapper’s vehicle on Saturday because he “seemed to be under the influence of narcotics. He was arrested and taken to the police station to take a urine test,” according to a police spokesman. He was released after a urine test, whose results are not yet known.
After his release, Snoop took to Instagram, where he said he was arrested because of racial profiling. “They made me pee in a cup — didn’t find [expletive],” he said in a video posted to the site.
“No case, no nothing.”
Snoop Dogg has repeated convictions for possession of marijuana, and form for taking it to Scandinavia. In July 2012 he was banned from entering Norway for two years, after being found in possession of eight grams of marijuana, as well nearly £18,000 (Dh102,956) of Norwegian currency.
Swedish Idol judge Alexander Bard said the arrest was not racial profiling, but related to the Swedish authorities’ pursuit of celebrities. “This arrest was not racial profiling, which is an American [phenomenon] but not a Swedish phenomenon. But it was clearly a case of celebrity profiling,” he told Billboard .
“The Swedish police are losing the ridiculous battle called the War on Drugs as much in Sweden as anywhere else at the moment, and they have clearly now gone into desperate hypergear by chasing celebrities over drug use to grab media headlines, and thereby hoping to retake the initiative in this prestigious generational battle.”
