SWISS APPROVE HEROIN SCHEME BUT VOTE DOWN MARIJUANA LAW

A pioneering Swiss programme to give addicts government authorised
heroin was overwhelmingly approved yesterday by voters who
simultaneously rejected the decriminalisation of marijuana.

Sixty-eight per cent of voters approved making the heroin programme
permanent. It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the
health and daily lives of addicts since it began 14 years ago.

Only 36.8% of voters favoured the marijuana initiative.

Olivier Borer, 35, a musician from the northern town of Solothurn,
said he welcomed the outcome. "I think it's very important to help
these people, but not to facilitate the using of drugs. You can just
see in the Netherlands how it's going. People just go there to smoke,"
Borer said.

Parliament approved the heroin measure in a revision of Switzerland's
narcotics law in March, but conservatives challenged the decision and
forced a national referendum under Switzerland's system of direct democracy.

The heroin programme has helped eliminate the scenes of large groups
of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in
the 1980s and 1990s, supporters say.

The United States and the UN narcotics board have criticised the
programme as potentially fuelling drug abuse, but other governments
have started or are considering their own schemes modelled on the system.

The marijuana issue was based on a separate citizens' initiative to
decriminalise the consumption of marijuana and growing the plant for
personal use.

Jo Lang, a Green party member of parliament from the city of Zug, said
he was disappointed in the failure of the marijuana measure because it
meant 600,000 people in Switzerland would be treated as criminals
because they used cannabis.

"People have died from alcohol and heroin, but not from cannabis,"
Lang said.

The government, which opposes the marijuana proposal, said it feared
that liberalising marijuana could cause problems with neighbouring
countries. "This could lead to a situation where you have some sort of
cannabis tourism in Switzerland because something that is illegal in
the EU would be legal in Switzerland," a government spokesman, Oswald
Sigg, said.

The heroin program is offered in 23 discreet centres across
Switzerland, which offer support to nearly 1,300 addicts who have not
been helped by other therapies. Under supervision, they inject doses
measured to satisfy a craving but not enough to cause a high.