GENEVA (AP) Marijuana, cocaine and heroin would all be legal in Switzerland if a referendum to decriminalize drugs passes this Sunday. The government opposes the plan, fearing it would turn the orderly Alpine nation into a haven for drug tourists and traffickers. Also against it are church groups, police chiefs, social workers, doctors and other professionals who work with addicts. But the left-wing coalition that gathered the necessary 100,000 signatures for the referendum claims its passage would kill the street market in drugs. [continues 315 words]
ZURICH (Reuters)-Swiss voters Sunday will decide on a sweeping proposal to legalise narcotics, a measure that proponents say will knock out the drugs mafia but critics declare will isolate Switzerland as a haven for junkies. The plan would make Switzerland the only country in the world where anyone aged 18 or older could buy the narcotics of their choice, from marijuana to heroin, from state-run outlets or pharmacies after consultation. The proposal is widely expected to fail, as do most policy ideas put up by citizens for a national referendum under the Swiss system of direct democracy. [continues 434 words]
The Catholic People's Party (CDU) recommended rejection of all four issues on the agenda for the referendum on 29 Nov 1998." The (CDU, Catholic People's) Party rejects the Droleg Initiative since it would turn Switzerland into an international market place for drugs. The labour code would in the end facilitate post-capitalistic forms of the exploitation of the work force through the new Neo-liberalism. Olten, 8. Nov. "Die Katholische Volkspartei Schweiz (KVP) empfiehlt alle vier Abstimmungsvorlagen vom 29. November zur Ablehnung. "Die Droleg-Initiative lehnt die Partei ab, weil sie die Schweiz zu einem internationalen Umschlagplatz fur Drogen machen wurde. Das Arbeitsgesetz schliesslich ermogliche postkapitalistische Formen der Ausbeutung menschlicher Arbeitskraft durch den Neoliberalismus. - --- Checked-by: Richard Lake [end]
A half-century of drug prohibition has not impeded the exponential growth of the black market and has enriched the increasingly-efficient criminal elements who trade in drugs. According to the promoters of the DROLEG initiative, to be voted on at the end of the month, it is time to change course and initiate a regulated market for the now-prohibited drugs. Is this the correct course of action to take? What dangers will it present? Can Switzerland undertake such a project alone? Here is a response to such questions: [continues 2544 words]
Extended To Include All Drugs The Zurich town council has reviewed the principles on which it founded its drug policy in 1991. The review established the continuing validity of those principles. The goal of an invisible drug scene has been achieved. Its maintenance depends as much now as then on a great effort from all the participating bodies. What is new is the extension of the existing principles to drugs generally. Representing the municipal council were Esther Maurer, Monika Sticker, and Robert Neukomm, representing respectively, the departments of the police, social affairs and health. At a Wednesday press conference, they declared themselves well satisfied with the progress made by Zurich in the general area of drug control. [continues 155 words]
In Switzerland, the consumption of a prohibited drug is an offense punishable by penal sanctions (article 19a of the law on narcotics). But risk of apprehension and arrest is not the same in Geneva and Zurich. Each applies the law according its priorities and its political choices in the struggle against drugs. In 1994, a survey of the Federal Office of Statistics (OFS) already showed important disparities concerning the type of offense (consumption or traffic), or the type of drug ("hard drug" or hashish). [continues 213 words]
REFORMS. The voting on the Droleg initiative that will take place end of November will be decisive for current reforms. With the publication of several competing proposals on the topic, discussions won't be easy. After a long period of calm, the approach of the vote on the Droleg initiative at the end of November has reopened the political debate on prohibited drugs. The "Sonntags-Zeitung" (a Zurich newspaper) fired the first salvo Sunday in exposing a report of the Parliamentary working group, "Politique de la Drogue" (Politics of Illegal Drugs), on proposed modifications to the federal law on narcotics (LFS). In this report, the four governmental parties consider the possibility of testing the decriminalization of drug use solely in certain cities, similarly to the model of experimental prescription of heroin. [continues 616 words]
Bern -- The councilwoman federal Ruth Dreifuss calls "firmly" for Switzerland to reject the Droleg initiative next November 29. Friday, she criticized toughly "the naivete" of Droleg propositions which, if they were put in action, "would increase of alarming way the consumption of drugs." TO "the utopian" Droleg, Ruth Dreifuss opposes the pursuit of the politics "coherent and efficient" definite in 1994 by the federal Council. This one constitutes a scholarly dosage of complementary measures that borrows to the four domains that are the therapy and the reinsertion, the reduction of risks and help to the survival, the repression, and in short the prevention. Ruth Dreifuss warns: Droleg does not aim to legalise the consumption of hashish, as some believe it. The initiative goes very beyond: its authors ask in substance the decriminalization of the consumption and of the trade of all drugs (to read below). [continues 611 words]
"It's paradoxical that the Swiss authorities say they're not going to try Salinas for drug trafficking but are nonetheless going to confiscate $114 million that he has in Swiss bank accounts,"wrote political commentator Sergio Sarmiento in the newspaper Reforma. - --- Checked-by: Don Beck [end]
Crime: The brother of the ex-president of Mexico already is facing murder charges in his homeland. Mexico City-After years of threats, Swiss authorities have decided not to press money-laundering charges against Raul Salinas, the elder brother of Mexico's former president. The Swiss, however, said Tuesday that they have frozen accounts of Salinas totaling some $115 million, arguing that the money is linked to narcotics trafficking. The government said it would keep the funds "for the benefit of the state." Salinas is appealing to the Swiss Supreme Court to recover the funds. [continues 228 words]
ZURICH, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Switzerland's budding domestic marijuana trade took a direct hit on Friday when a judge ruled that selling cannabis in aroma sachets, long in legal limbo, was clearly against the law. The ruling in a test case, although likely to be appealed, could spell the end of a quirky three-year boom in marijuana selling in Switzerland based on an apparent loophole in the wording of the law. ``It is quite clear that cannabis is a narcotic and falls under the narcotics law,'' Zurich district judge Thomas Meyer told a courtroom packed with friends of shop owner Bruno Hiltebrand and supporters of legalising marijuana. [continues 216 words]
BERN. Switzerland's legal prescription programme involving handing out heroin to addicts is being made permanent this weekend. This Thursday the upper chamber in Bern voted yes to the proposal, 30 for and 4 against. So far the prescription of legal heroin, morphine and methadone to about 800 drug abusers has been carried out on an experimental basis. Now it is estimated that the number of drug abusers who will have legal access to the drugs will increase to at least 2000. Many of them have failed with other treatment programmes. [continues 56 words]
ZURICH, Oct 12 (Reuters) - In little shops springing up around Switzerland, you can buy all the marijuana you want. You just aren't supposed to smoke it. Drugs made from the hemp plant are illegal in Switzerland, as in most countries, but a turn of phrase in Swiss lawbooks leaves open a loophole by prohibiting trade in marijuana only if it is sold specifically as a narcotic. Enterprising hemp retailers are testing the limits of the law by selling marijuana as potpourri, or dried hemp packed in small cloth bags as an herbal room scent and labelled "not for consumption". [continues 829 words]
SWITZERLAND'S experimental drug-distribution program is set to be extended after Swiss lawmakers yesterday gave the go-ahead for doctors to prescribe heroin to long-term addicts on a permanent basis. The upper house of parliament approved the measure by 30 votes to four, following approval by the lower house the previous day. The move is expected to increase from 800 to some 2000 or more the number of addicts who can receive controlled distribution. It comes into effect Saturday. [continues 156 words]
NEW YORK (AP) -- Swiss investigators have concluded that the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari played a key role in Mexico's cocaine trade and the flow of drugs into the United States, The New York Times reported Saturday. Raul Salinas, a food distribution official in his brother's administration, controlled "practically all drug shipments through Mexico," Swiss police concluded in the secret, 369-page report. That control began in 1988, when Carlos Salinas became president. The report claims Raul Salinas took approximately $500 million in bribes to protect the drug trade into the United States, even commandeering government trucks and railroad cars for cocaine shipments north. It also said he funneled drug money into his brother's presidential campaign. [continues 212 words]
A survey released by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health constitutes its strongest-ever condemnation of the cost of smoking to Swiss society. The burden is calculated to be about US$6B75 each year. Approximately 35% of Switzerland's 7 million population are smokers. The survey, based on 1995 figures, commissioned by the Federal Office of Public Health and done by the Institute for Economic Research at NeuchE1tel University and the HealthEcon Bureau of Basle, also shows that about 40% of people in the 20-24 age group smoke, with the percentage of schoolchildren smoking cigarettes having risen from 4 to 7% in the past decade. In Switzerland cigarette smoking is particularly prevalent among teenagers, especially girls. [continues 95 words]
ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey praised a Swiss program to register drug abusers, but said Wednesday he is skeptical of a government policy to distribute free heroin to addicts. McCaffrey is visiting Zurich as part of an eight-day tour to examine European drug treatment and prevention programs. He said he was impressed by a "relocation center" that takes addicts off the streets for 24 hours to register them, clean them up and, if possible, send them home. [continues 229 words]
ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey praised a Swiss program to register drug abusers, but said Wednesday he is skeptical of a government policy to distribute free heroin to addicts. McCaffrey is visiting Zurich as part of an eight-day tour to examine European drug treatment and prevention programs. He said he was impressed by a ``relocation center'' that takes addicts off the streets for 24 hours to register them, clean them up and, if possible, send them home. [continues 234 words]
Heroin is one of the most feared drugs: the mortality among heroin users is many times higher than among other drug users. This year police and customs officials have uncovered record-breaking quantities of heroin in Sweden;among other reasons thanks to stepped up cooperation with the police in the former states of East Europe. About 65 kilograms of heroin have been seized in Sweden this year. That can be compared with 14 kilograms for all of 1997. "In all likelihood, cooperation with the Czech Republic and Slovakia has meant a lot," said Lennart Davidsson, the National Criminal Police Force"s expert on heroin smuggling from the Balkans. [continues 621 words]
ZURICH (Reuters) - The top U.S. drug policy adviser on Wednesday criticized Switzerland's heroin distribution program for severe addicts and said he was anxious to see the results of the experiment several years from now. "I'm very skeptical about the evidence of heroin maintenance. I think that our own thinking is to strongly oppose this. We have historical experience in the 1920s that it did not work," General Barry McCaffrey, the White House drugs chief, told a news briefing in Zurich. [continues 413 words]
Inside Switzerland
