[Lead lines]:

A half-century of drug prohibition has not impeded the exponential growth
of the black market and has enriched the increasingly-efficient criminal
elements who trade in drugs.

According to the promoters of the DROLEG initiative, to be voted on at the
end of the month, it is time to change course and initiate a regulated
market for the now-prohibited drugs.

Is this the correct course of action to take? What dangers will it present?
Can Switzerland undertake such a project alone? Here is a response to such
questions:

[title] ET SI L'ETAT PRENAIT EN CHARGE LE MARCHE DES DROGUES?

AND WHAT IF THE STATE SHOULD TAKE CHARGE OF THE MARKET IN PROHIBITED DRUGS?

Illegal drugs are not more dangerous than legal ones. The attempt to make
them unavailable through repression has proved both impossible and ruinous
in terms of public health. A legalised market for drugs would not be more
attractive of business than the existing underground supermarket where
anyone can find what he wants without difficulty. Young people, most
notably, would be better protected by a differentiated regulation than a
generalized prohibition. In brief: Switzerland should, starting today,
demonstrate common sense by creating, independently, a regulated market for
drugs. Such are the arguments, in brief, of those who support the DROLEG
initiative, which will be put to a vote on the 29th of November. In
opposition to such ideas we find: those who a year ago supported the
initiative Jeunesse Sans Drogue [Youth without Drugs], the Conseil Federal
and the defenders of the movement called the "Quatre Piliers" [the Four
Foundations] prevention, treatment, repression and life assistance {trans}.
The former strongly object to the principle of DROLEG itself, for the
latter it seems more a matter of convenience. But perhaps the principles of
the supporters of the initiative are in effect part of a third Swiss
outlook, whose characteristic is to reunite radically different approaches
around common values: concern for public health, pragmatism, willingness to
compromise, solidarity? The prescription of heroin, for example, departs
from the principle that a drug which is not adulterated and which is
consumed in hygienic conditions causes less harm than the marginality and
exclusion which accompanies the use of an illegal drug. And so far,
practice seems to confirm this hypothesis, often misunderstood or
inaccurately perceived. We shall elaborate on this hypothesis below, and
then return to the arguments of those in opposition.

"Pour reglementer il faut commencer par autoriser" "In Order to Regulate
One Must Start by Authorising" {permitting} by Sylvie Arsever

DROLEG consists of two principles. The use of drugs should no longer be a
crime. And the state must take the responsibility for supply and
distribution. The aim is to create a controlled market in drugs. As long as
a black market controls supply, as the Geneva Professor of Law
Christian-Nils Robert insists, such a market by definition escapes all
possible regulation. With a black market there is no quality control, no
relevant information for consumers, no guarantee on the competence or
morality of those who sell the products, no possibility to exclude from use
certain categories such as minors as we find, for example, for prescription
medicines (which include several psychoactive drugs), or for alcohol. The
consequences for health in such a situation are crushing: specifically,
risks of overdose or poisoning from toxic adulterants, and of infection
from contaminated syringes.

And we must add to that further drawbacks: people are less informed about
the products on offer, the user more easily falls into risky practices: for
example, having a taste of heroin because a dealer has run out of hashish
that day, or mixing drugs. The user has greater difficulty in moderating
his use. The moderate consumer of alcohol spaces his drinks, chooses wine
or beer rather than distilled liquor. The consumer of a black-market drug
tends to take what is available, in the most concentrated (and thus
harmful) form possible. With the black market the consumer is subject to
yet further risks: violence, arrest, loss of employment, with the endpoint,
if things go badly, of becoming enmeshed in criminal activity to finance
further drug use.

If the consequences of illegality are not seen as an result of prohibition,
it is because they appear as perverse side-effects of an otherwise
justified policy: total war on products deemed too dangerous for general
circulation or even use under simple controls. Such certainty of purpose,
supporters of the initiative insist, has today been seriously discredited.
As early as 1994 the Comite Consultatif Francais D'ethique Pour Les
Sciences De La Vie Et De La Sante [French Advisory Committee on Ethics in
Life Sciences and Health] had stated: "The knowledge gained in the past few
years in the fields of neurobiology and pharmacology does not permit
justifying any real distinction between licit and illicit drugs." Cannabis,
which practically everyone agrees presents at the very worst a danger
comparable to that of alcohol or tobacco, and without doubt even less, is
only one example of the incoherence of the outlook which for example
applies radically different statutes for morphine and heroin, which is
nothing but a more concentrated derivative of the drug.

The distinction between legal and illegal substances illustrates yet a
further contradiction: drugs with a tradition of use in the North are
permitted, those with Southern traditions are forbidden. And much to the
detriment of the South, the thrust of the War on Drugs, under American
leadership and with methods such as use of defoliants on illicit crops,
undermines the sovereignty of the countries concerned. In any case, the War
on Drugs has proved itself totally impotent to achieve its primary goal, to
reduce the supply of drugs on the streets of the North. If the War has
scored a few points (such as the eradication of Turkish drug crops in the
1970s and more recently the very expensive decapitation of the Medellin and
Cali cartels), these victories are hardly permanent. New producers replace
the old with little delay and the world black market in drugs enjoys an
exponential growth. Opium, coca, and cannabis can be cultivated far from
their native territories and the appearance of entirely synthetic drugs,
easy to manufacture in rudimentary laboratories, makes a complete mockery
of the idea of eradication of drugs in their zones of production. The
development of the global world market in illicit drugs has benefited the
international criminal networks and made them ever more efficient, and
today they have the wherewithal to bribe magistrates, police, and sometimes
even high government officials.

Finally, as noted by the economist Dominik Egli, member of the subcommittee
on drugs of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics [Commission Federale des
Stupefiants], Prohibition today does not limit the access to drugs, it
facilitates it. In the black market, all clients are welcome. Younger
clients may enjoy special prices with a view to their continued fidelity.
The replacement of the black supermarket in drugs with a regulated
distribution won't solve the drug problem overnight. But it will permit the
reduction of the present dimension of harm caused by drugs. Some persons
will always have a psychological problem with products such as alcohol,
opiates, cocaine, etc., while others can effectively control their use.

La Cohorte Bigarree Des Partisans De L'initiative Droleg [The colorful
diversity of the supporters of DROLEG]

PEOPLE OF WIDELY DIFFERING ATTITUDE HAVE UNITED BEHIND THE INITIATIVE

by Sylvain Besson, Berne

The Droleg campaign, "c'est lui." Francois Reusser, 41 years old, has been
working 6 years for the Initiative since its beginnings in 1992. A former
vice-president of the Socialist Party of Zurich, Mr. Reusser has with a
very modest budget of about 250,000 francs attempted to attain at least an
honorable showing for the initiative on the 29th of November vote. At his
side a diverse collection of persons of greatly differing backgrounds has
joined in the effort. An offspring of "alternative culture," his political
education was forged from the happenings in Zurich of the 1980s. Pale in
appearance, Mr. Reusser works in a store which sells articles based on the
cannabis or hemp plant, and he has spent a good part of his life in the
promotion of cannabis. Among the most active DRLOLEG supporters he is not
the only person so concerned. Another such participant is Bernard Rappaz,
an agriculturalist from Valais who has been a pioneer in the culture of
hemp in Switzerland. Another is Sylvain Goujon, an imposing figure with
full bushy beard, who has participated in the efforts of the radical left
in Lausanne and the militia in the effort to legalise cannabis since the
1980s. The former inspiration of the Worker's Populist Party,
Anne-Catherine Menetrey from Vaud, is less concerned by hemp than by "the
suffering of the drug addicts in the streets, caused more by the conditions
of clandestine consumption than the drugs themselves." As for the
ecologists, she observes with detachment the hesitation of the Vaud's
socialist and papist {Catholic?} parties which have avoided recommending
any voting position at all for their militants. "The Greens are more
libertarian. And that undoubtedly explains the difference of concern
between us and them." "Libertarian culture" has also attracted to the
reform movement persons of a more bourgeois attitude. Reto Tscholl, chief
physician at the Hospital of the Canton of Aarau, brings such an attitude
to the Initiative's committee. He discovered the DROLEG by reading la Neue
Zurcher Zeitung (Zurich Times). Member of the Radical Party, he joined the
reformers because repressive politics on drugs "wastes every year 500
million francs, financed by the taxpayer," and he rebels against state
intrusion into the private lives of drug users. Christian-Nils Robert,
Professeur of Law at the University of Geneva, holds a similar view: a
"former socialist" who has become a "liberal in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of
the word," he defends the Initiative through "attachment to the principles
of penal law," which should punish only those who harm others. The
supporters of DROLEG are convinced that, in every segment of society, their
ideas are shared by many who dare not express them. Among the professionals
who treat drug users in particular, the mobilization should be stronger.
One such social worker, Gerald Progins, explains that a great majority of
his co-workers preach decriminalisation but fear the risks of the
establishment of a controlled market in drugs. "How can we explain to young
people that drugs are dangerous if we do not prohibit them?"

"Est-ce bien raisonable?" [Unrealistic gamble or calculated move? ] Some
tools to help evaluate the arguments.

Illegal drugs are no more dangerous than other drugs. This is probably the
strongest plank in the Reformer's argument. Only a minority of
pharmacologists and doctors still insist that the prohibited drugs pose
some special danger which sets them apart from legal drugs. If, for
example, heroin causes dependence much more rapidly than alcohol, its long
term effects on the organism are much more benign. The majority of those
who have researched the subject believe that it is not the drug itself but
its abuse which causes a health problem. All mood altering drugs, heroin
included, may be used reasonably as well as abused. Some studies even seem
to indicate that there are some individuals who are predisposed to abuse
every psychotropic substance they come into contact with.

Prohibition is a failure. In itself, failure to respect the law is not in
itself sufficient to bring the law into disrepute. The opposite is the case
in nature where failure to respect the law inevitably entails harmful
consequences. The failure to check the spread of mind altering drugs is
particularly striking. One need do no more than read UNO's annual report to
be convinced.

We would not see an explosive increase in demand with regulated
distribution. Failing the necessary preliminary evidence, however, one is
reduced to suppositions. Economic theory tells us that demand increases
when prices fall. The whole concept of regulation rests on the
presupposition that it is possible to put the black market out of business
simply by offering competition. From this point of view, the state will
offer drugs to a wide range of consumers at prices lower than those of the
black market. One might reasonably suppose that this strategy would lead to
an increase in the number of consumers. But to what extent? Here
predictions are difficult. The collapse of Swiss black market prices over
recent years has not led to an explosion in consumption rates, which is
rather reassuring. Where access to certain drugs has been facilitated,
contradictory results have been observed. When doctors in England were
permitted for some years to prescribe drugs freely, this did not lead to
great differences in the drug market. The same practice in Sweden brought
about a steep rise in the number of consumers. Reformers generally are
prepared to admit a probable rise in consumption but say that this increase
will be largely compensated, in terms of public health costs, by the
elimination of the perverse effects of prohibition.

The young will be better protected by a regulated market. The black market
in drugs, without a doubt, is especially attractive of a young clientele.
For adolescents, what is forbidden attracts their interest more than what
is merely warned about. In addition, the black market functions in a
particularly efficient way. The first dealer a young person comes into
contact with is often a friend whose advice is especially difficult to
resist. But this does not automatically mean that it will be easy to
organize the controlled distribution of drugs excluding use by minors
without at the same time creating a black market that functions only for
them. The question of use by minors implies also the questioning of the
preventive effect of prohibition of drugs. The way of resolving it is
mostly a matter of convictions. For some, removing prohibition would amount
to incitement in a way impossible to estimate. For others, it would permit,
on the contrary, the putting in place of the only dissuasion that would be
really effective: that which leads to differentiated and well-informed
discourse among those groups with the most influence on the young, their
parents, their friends, teachers, and physicians.

Switzerland should proceed with reforms alone. This is the weakest link of
the DROLEG argument. The central hypothesis of anti-prohibitionists is that
the large profits realized by the black market is the proof that
prohibition is not dissuasive. Conversely, if the profits disappeared, so
would the black market. Crime syndicates, weakened, would be forced to turn
to other sources of revenue. Such an analysis, simplistic as it seems in
view of the ease with which the crime mafias arising around the various
black markets in the former Soviet empire grew and prospered with the
coming of liberalism, is only valid at most in a general way. Applied to an
individual isolated country, it has obvious faults. In practice, the sale
of drugs by the non-licensed would remain forbidden. It would seem very
difficult from a legal standpoint to continue to apply the same punishments
for drug dealing as are applied in other countries which surround us.
Switzerland would therefore become very attractive for drug-traffickers.
The only way to counter this tendency would be to establish a regulated
distribution free enough to attract all potential customers of a black
market. But this imperative would conflict with the primary intent of
regulated distribution which is justifiably to provide a true regulation of
the market on the basis of price and to exclude, for example, the young or
the "tourists" which would no doubt come in droves to our country. The plan
to go it alone in this matter of reform would be devilishly difficult.

Checked-by: Richard Lake