Heroin (KEYSTONE/STR)

Adrian Kormann is the medical director of a heroin prescription centre in Zurich. About 140 patients attend the clinic. They have dropped out of at least two other treatments, including substitution with methadone. They come at least once daily, either to inject heroin or take it orally. 

Kormann says the patients can also choose the size of needle they want, depending on whether they need to hit a deeper vein. They go into a room where they can inject the heroin in clean conditions. Supervisors make sure that no heroin leaves the premises and that it is taken properly.

The government has a four-pillar strategy on drugs, based on prevention, harm reduction, therapy and repression. Handing out heroin under medical supervision is considered part of therapy. Voters approved the programme back in 1999. But it was only for a ten-year trial phase and rightwingers want it stopped. 

Andrea Geissbühler is Swiss People’s Party representative for the canton of Bern. She says the drug policy has got out of hand and that Switzerland has forgotten the overall goal of getting addicts off drugs.

It was a trial, she says, and we have no evidence that it is either useful or successful. We know that you can’t cure drug addiction with drugs in the same way that you can’t cure alcohol dependency with alcohol.

The four-pillar drugs policy was adopted in response to the open drugs scene in Zurich and other Swiss cities during the 1990s. Supporters of the heroin prescription programme say the number of drug-related deaths each year has dropped from 400 to about 150 over the past 15 years. 

Kormann says addicts who get their heroin on the street risk dirty needles and infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis. He says the programme helps to stabilise their physical and mental health, and it drastically cuts drug-related crime. It allows people to get some order back into their lives, get off the streets and hold down jobs.

Studies have shown that the cost of treating a patient with heroin costs about CHF50 a day. Those not on the programme cost the state far more in terms of policing, imprisonment and poor health. Countries worldwide have adopted heroin prescription programmes after the Swiss model. And most of the main political parties here support the revised drugs law. 

Topics: CH votes