ECSTASY A LA SUISSE

"Not Harmless; But Not Such A Serious Risk"

Where the Swiss supreme court judges stepped this week, will other
policy-makers be ready to follow?

The court ruled that dealing in ecstasy was not a serious offence under the
state's narcotics laws. Ecstasy will remain illegal but dealers will no
longer face jail sentences of up to 20 years. The judges conceded the
hallucinogenic drug "is in no way a harmless substance", but concluded that
present knowledge suggests it does not pose a serious risk to physical or
mental health.

They noted that users were "socially integrated people", who do not need to
resort to criminal behaviour to fund their habit.

For these reasons it was much closer to soft drugs than to hard drugs like
heroin which require persistent criminal activities to fund their huge cost.

The judges could have been reading from the 1997 Joseph Rowntree Foundation
report on young people.

It emphasised the need for policy-makers to get away from the idea that
there was a single drugs culture.

Different drugs play different roles in different youth cultures and
sub-cultures. Only if local differences are allowed for - Wythenshawe youths
needing to fill a vacuum, Kingston youths looking for relaxation - will harm
reduction succeed.

But how would this have helped Leah Betts, the teenager who died on her 18th
birthday in 1995 after taking an ecstasy tablet?

We know that hundreds of thousands of young people have taken the drug
without ill effects.

One reason for its popularity was the way it helped young people to party
through the night - a related drug was used by fighter pilots to stay alert
in the second world war. A less draconian approach would allow drugs that
are on the streets to be tested.

This is the Dutch approach: a voluntary group tests the quality - and the
strengths - of the drug before the raves begin. Where it finds bad batches,
news quickly spreads.

That approach might even have helped save Leah.