BOWING TO 'SOCIAL REALITY,' SWISS SEEK TO SOFTEN DRUG LAWS

BERN: Once a month, Didier, a clean-cut 37-year-old government worker,
stops by a little shop called Growland, just around the corner from the
city's elegant concert hall. Like 10 other shops in Bern, Growland sells
hemp products and is listed in telephone directories under cannabis.

Didier, who declined to give his full name, said he was a regular smoker and
had come to stock up. So did a steady stream of other customers that day.

While the sale of cannabis for smoking at Growland and its competitors is
illegal, that law is not strongly enforced in this part of Switzerland. Drug
laws are applied more strictly in the French-speaking western part of the
country, where Didier lives.

That is why he comes here, instead of buying at home in Neuchatel, an hour
away. "It's not a problem," he said. "Everybody knows you can come to Bern
and get it."

But even if laws are unevenly enforced these days, more and more Swiss, it
seems, openly flout them while more and more police officers look the other
way.

The scent of marijuana can be found on trains, in stations and in
restaurants, and cannabis is available for home delivery from Internet
sites.

A government survey in February found that as many as one in four people in
this nation of 7 million has smoked marijuana. Among the 90,000 estimated to
smoke daily, nearly one-third are teenagers. Another 500,000 are thought to
smoke occasionally.

Faced with such numbers, officials announced in early March that they would
bow to "social reality" and take steps to remove the penalties for
consumption of marijuana and hashish, also made from hemp, and to lift
restrictions on their sale and production.

The move to liberalize its laws has put Switzerland at odds with its
neighbors, which have tougher laws regulating drug use. It has also drawn
anger from some United Nations agencies, which were already critical of a
Swiss program that provides needles and heroin to some hard-core addicts in
an effort to reduce crime and the spread of AIDS.

Swiss officials say they are setting a new course on soft drugs - simply
because the traditional one is not working. "Young people don't understand
anymore why it's forbidden when there are so many problems with alcohol and
cigarette smoking," said Dr. Martin Buechi, a federal health department
official.

That is the case with Christoph, who would not give his full name, but said
he was the legal age, 18, for buying hemp flowers in sachet form at
Aromatix, another Bern cannabis store. The sale of the flowers is legal as
long as it is not used for smoking.

He says that removing a penalty would make little difference in whether he
smoked it or how often. "I'm buying some for me and some for my friends," he
said.

Another customer, Christian, a 31-year-old electrician who was leaving the
basement-level store in central Bern, agreed. "They've been talking about
changing the law since 1988," he said, after buying a bag of hemp flowers.

"I've never had a problem with the police. I don't come here too often
because I grow my own plants, and smoke what I grow."

Still, he said, he wanted to be discreet because he coaches high school
basketball. "I wouldn't smoke around them," he said. "Kids have to be old
enough to know what they're doing."

Health officials are struggling to find ways to control the use of marijuana
among teenagers. A draft law would allow sale of small amounts to Swiss
residents at least 18 years old. Shops that sell it would not be allowed to
advertise, though some already do.

The proposed changes, which are unlikely to take effect until 2003, have
inevitably invited comparison with the Netherlands, where marijuana-selling
"coffee shops" have become a part of the national identity. Switzerland's
controlled opening of the cannabis market, if approved by Parliament, could
go further than the law in the Netherlands, where cannabis consumption is
only partly decriminalized.

Critics say the changes will create a magnet for "drug tourists" in a
country where young people already flock to hike and ski.

Dr. Buechi insists the measure discourages use of other drugs like heroin,
cocaine and ecstasy. They will remain illegal, although violations will not
necessarily be prosecuted, officials have said. Although all details of the
law have to be worked out, proponents contend it would free the police to
concentrate on large-scale producers and traders.

Passage of the measure is far from sure. The rightist Swiss People's Party
has vowed to fight any such change in a national referendum. In 1998, voters
rejected a broader initiative to legalize all drug consumption.

But Swiss federal authorities believe that liberalizing cannabis is likely
to attract widespread support because it "takes into account the social
reality," said Ruth Dreifuss, a former president who is social welfare
minister - and because 53 percent of those polled in February said that they
approve of decriminalizing soft drugs.

If it comes to a vote, the government can count on support from an unlikely
group: farmers. According to the government, hemp is being grown on hundreds
of plots - maybe thousands - around Switzerland.

Growing hemp is legal as long as the tough, fibrous plant is not sold for
production of narcotics (parts of the plant are used to make fabric and
cosmetics.) The proposed law would legalize growing hemp for smoking as long
as it was sold in Switzerland.

Earlier this year, the federal drugs commission estimated that sales for
smoking could exceed $1 billion a year.