SWISS LIKELY TO APPROVE PRESCRIPTION HEROIN

GENEVA (AP) -- Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white
powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.

Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses
handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering
Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe
place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N.
narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But
governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering
their own programs modeled on the system, which is credited with
reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a
referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.

The heroin program has won wide support within Switzerland since it
was begun 14 years ago to eliminate scenes of large groups of drug
users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the
1980s and 1990s.

Zullino's office, part of the Geneva University Hospitals, is one of
23 such centers in Switzerland.

Patients among the nearly 1,300 addicts whom other therapies have
failed to help take doses carefully measured to satisfy their
cravings but not enough to cause a big high. Four at a time inject
themselves as a nurse watches.

In a few minutes most get up and leave. Those who have jobs go back to work.

"Heroin prescription is not an end in itself," said Zullino, adding
that the 47 addicts who come to his office receive a series of
additional treatments, such as therapy with a psychiatrist and
counseling by social workers.

"The aim is that the patients learn how to function in society," he
said, adding that after two to three years in the program, one-third
of the patients start abstinence-programs and one-third change to
methadone treatment.

"Thanks to this policy we don't have open drug scenes anymore," said
Andreas Kaesermann, a spokesman for the Social Democrat Party, part
of the coalition government.

A mid-November survey of 1,209 voters by the respected gfs.bern
institute indicated the program will be easily approved, with 63
percent of voters favoring it compared with 21 percent opposed. The
poll had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

Health insurance pays for the bulk of the program, which costs 26
million Swiss francs ($22 million) a year. All residents in
Switzerland are required to have health insurance, with the
government paying insurance premiums for those who cannot afford it.

"It's wrong that the health insurance pays for this," said Alain
Hauert, spokesman for the right-wing Swiss People's Party. He said
the state should invest more money in prevention and law enforcement.

Crimes committed by heroin addicts have dropped 60 percent since the
program began in 1994, according to the Federal Office of Public Health.