A PIONEERING Swiss project to give addicts government- authorised heroin was approved overwhelmingly in a national referendum yesterday.
Projections based on initial results indicated 69 per cent of voters backed making the heroin programme permanent. It is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts since it began 14 years ago.
Parliament appro
ved the measure in a revision of Switzerland's narcotics law in March, but conservatives challenged the decision and forced a national referendum under Switzerland's system of direct democracy.
The programme has helped eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks, which marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s, supporters say.
The United States and the United Nations narcotics board have criticised the programme as potentially fuelling drug abuse, but other governments have started, or are considering, their own programmes modelled on the system.
The heroin programme takes place in 23 discreet centres across Switzerland, which offer a range of support to nearly 1,300 addicts who haven't been helped by other therapies. Under careful supervision, they inject doses carefully measured to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high.
Dr Daniele Zullino, of Geneva University Hospitals, runs one of the centres.
Four at a time inject themselves as a nurse watches.
"Heroin prescription is not an end in itself," said Dr Zullino, who pointed out the 47 addicts who went to his office received a series of additional treatments, such as therapy with a psychiatrist and counselling by social workers.
"The aim is that the patients learn how to function in society," he said, adding that after two to three years in the scheme, one-third of patients start abstinence programmes and a third change to methadone treatment.
Dr Zullino said patients reduced consumption of other narcotics once they started the heroin programme and suffered less from psychiatric disorders.
But he added: "The idea has never been to liberalise heroin. It's considered a medicine and used as such."
Andreas Kaesermann, a spokesman for the Social Democrat Party, part of the coalition government, said: "Thanks to this policy, we don't have open drug scenes any more."
Sabina Geissbuehler-Strupler, of the right-wing Swiss People's Party, which led the campaign against the programme, said she was disappointed by the vote.
"That is damage limitation," she said. "Ninety-five per cent of the addicts are not healed."
Health insurance pays for the bulk of the scheme, which costs 26 million Swiss francs (£14 million) a year. All residents in Switzerland are required to have health insurance, with the government paying the premiums for those who cannot afford it.
In the same referendum, an initiative to decriminalise marijuana failed to win the required majority to pass.
