DROLEG FERAIT DE LA SUISSE L'ENTREPOT EUROPEEN DES DROGUES

Bern -- The councilwoman federal Ruth Dreifuss calls "firmly" for
Switzerland to reject the Droleg initiative next November 29. Friday, she
criticized toughly "the naivete" of Droleg propositions which, if they were
put in action, "would increase of alarming way the consumption of drugs."

TO "the utopian" Droleg, Ruth Dreifuss opposes the pursuit of the politics
"coherent and efficient" definite in 1994 by the federal Council. This one
constitutes a scholarly dosage of complementary measures that borrows to
the four domains that are the therapy and the reinsertion, the reduction of
risks and help to the survival, the repression, and in short the
prevention. Ruth Dreifuss warns: Droleg does not aim to legalise the
consumption of hashish, as some believe it. The initiative goes very
beyond: its authors ask in substance the decriminalization of the
consumption and of the trade of all drugs (to read below).

Launched in the German speaking Switzerland by anti-Prohibitionists, Droleg
expresses a double hope: the legal trading of drugs will hurt traffickers
and mafias while depriving them of the juicy incomes today drawn from the
sale of illegal narcotics; the vicious circle of delinquency and
prostitution of drug addicts (in order to procure themselves their drugs)
will be broken. Droleg's people take their desires for the reality, attacks
Ruth Dreifuss. To their idealized vision, she supports the reasonable
approach of the federal Senate, which does forget neither sufferings of
drug addicts nor the complexity of the problem. "To sell narcotics freely
without medical control is like ignoring that drugs produce serious
dependencies," she accuses.

And to add to that a legal drug market reserved for Swiss nationals will
not prevent a black-market from developing itself in Switzerland. "The
country will become the warehouse of narcotics and the rotating plate of
the traffic in Europe", stated Valentin Roschacher, Vice-Director of the
Federal Office of the Police. Traffickers and drug addicts will flow [to
Switzerland] to get a stock of, which is everywhere else. forbidden
narcotics. The federal Council [would be required to] denounce its
international obligations and Switzerland will fall in a disastrous
isolation."

Ruth Dreifuss interprets Droleg like a gesture of impatience. When the
harvest of signings [?] began in 1993, the open scene of drug use in Zurich
and Bern shocked. The police, judicial, sanitary and social authorities
seemed overwhelmed.

The situation has changed, assures the Director of the Federal Office of
the Public Health, Thomas Zeltner. The rooms for treatment doubled, the
therapeutic treatments varied.

In short, heroine's medical distribution reduced the physical decay of drug
addicts. The Federal Senate understood this and has just voted the pursuit
of this program and its immediate widening from Zurich to the whole
country. This decision reinforces Ruth Dreifuss in her politics, exercise
patience and pragmatic, against the drug. A politics that considers, in the
end, the decriminalization of the only consumption of drugs.

Of propositions, some daring, others moderate, are to the survey [?] in
view of the revision of the federal law on narcotics. "Nothing presses,"
assure Ruth Dreifuss however, [we are?] obligated to note that the
consensus does not exist yet on this question. The federal Senate will not
pronounce itself before the spring 1999.

What wants Droleg?

The objective of the popular initiative Droleg is the hard and soft drug
legalization. The consumption of narcotics, their culture, their possession
and their trading for personal use would not be penal.

The state would retain the monopoly of the culture, the import, the
manufacture and the trade of drugs. To replace the black-market, where the
offer of narcotics is today abundant, would follow a controlled access to
the various drugs. In the [words of the referendum ?], youngsters [over?]
18 years would be able to, with an electronic card, after an interview with
a professional of health, buy the drugs to their personal use (heroine,
cocaine, methadone and LSD) in pharmacies or governmental stores. Products
made from hemp and ecstasy would be on sale for youngsters [over?] 16 years.

The previous interview should give to each drug addict the possibility to
explain why he wants to take drugs. Preventive information on the effects
of narcotics on health would be delivered in every drug trading place.

The trade without concession would be penal, as well as the sale of
narcotics to people not living in Switzerland. The state should affect
[utilize] a part of the fiscal imposition [tax?] of narcotics to the
preventive and therapeutic programs as well as research on reasons of the
addiction.

Checked-by: Richard Lake