Newsgroups: alt.drugs
From: [catalyst remailer] at [netcom.com]
Subject: More "legalization" in the media :-).
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 11:13:07 -0700
	id AA17091; Mon, 11 Apr 94 11:12:05 -0700
	id LAA21031; Mon, 11 Apr 1994 11:13:07 -0700
X-Remailed-By: Remailer <[catalyst remailer] at [netcom.com]>

         ZURICH (Reuter) - At a railroad siding minutes from the
opulent city center of Zurich, hundreds of people mill about,
buying drugs at makeshift tables or injecting them into
needle-marked veins in their arms, legs, even necks.
         A crackdown by city authorities, arresting dealers and
chasing addicts off the streets, has not succeeded in removing
the shivering, stupefied figures lying on the ground nor the
blood-spattered syringes and swabs littered around them.
         The Zurich City Council has endured bitter disputes about
cleaning up Europe's largest open drug scene.
         Its solutions have never been liberal enough for Emilie
Lieberherr, the council's crusading head of social welfare, who
says she will pursue a plan to shift the narcotics mecca to the
city outskirts, despite retiring from her post at the end of
last month.
         ``Together with some prominent Zurich artists, members of
lawyers' organizations and a number of groups involved in the
drugs scene we are going to set up a non-governmental group,''
Lieberherr told Reuters.
         ``A private group may be better able to achieve this than
the government.''
         Lieberherr originally made her proposal in 1992 but then, as
now, it found little favor with the city government. But the
first woman to be elected to the council is undeterred.
         She says the addicts and dealers who throng at an abandoned
railroad siding in the Industriequartier cannot continue to be
imposed on the residents of the area.
         The Industriequartier, a traditionally working class
neighborhood, is close to the central station and a 10-minute
walk from the city's opulent Bahnhofstrasse.
         Lieberherr is fuming over what she sees as the local
government's repressive policies.
         Since the closure in early 1992 of Zurich's infamous
``Needle Park,'' where consumption and small-scale dealing was
officially tolerated, the city government has clamped down on
the drugs scene and now hounds addicts off the streets.
         Police keep a close watch on those who come to the
Industriequartier siding. If they do not live in Zurich they are
arrested and forced to return home.
         ``It makes me furious that people -- even colleagues of mine
(on the city council) -- believe not only that with repression
but by chasing addicts around the streets this problem can be
solved,'' Lieberherr said.
         ``And this picking up of addicts and sending them back to
their home cantons is an absolute waste of time. The next day
they simply come back again. Addicts go to wherever they can get
hold of the drugs they need.''
         The city government denies its policy is solely repressive,
arguing that it also provides medical help for drug addicts.
         Lieberherr says her proposal will take the unsightly scene
away from the centre of Zurich and will offer the addicts a
better environment than their trackside squalor.
         She wants to set up two centers on the outskirts of Zurich,
away from residential areas, where addicts would be allowed to
consume and Swiss dealers to set up a small-scale drugs market.
         Foreign dealers are seen as having caused the violence that
led to the closure of ``Needle Park.''
         Lieberherr's project, to be financed by private donations
and charities, would also offer social and medical help and
advice on withdrawal from addiction.
         The only lasting solution to the drug problem, not only in
Zurich but worldwide, Lieberherr says, is legalisation.
         ``This problem can only be solved with the legalisation of
drug consumption. Legalization does not mean total freedom to
consume, but it means a supervised consumption that will break
and destroy the Mafia-like power of drugs dealers,'' she said.
         ``It's the same phenomenon as alcohol prohibition in the
United States in the 1930s, but so many people do not want to
see this.''