SWISS TO CLEAR HAZE OVER POT PLANS

James started smoking cannabis when he was 12, insisting that it was
"normal" among all his friends. Now 14, he's growing his own marijuana
plants - his mother discovered them by the gladioli - and has promised
to work for better school grades if he's allowed to keep them.

"What can I do?" agonizes his mother, Liz. "If I let him grow it at
least he will have his own supply. If he has to go and buy it, then he
risks meeting older people selling Ecstasy and other nasty pills. And
if I don't let him have any money, he will find ways of getting some,"
she frets, asking that the family name not be used.

James is among a growing number of Swiss teenagers regularly smoking
joints.

A study earlier this year by the Swiss Institute for Prevention of
Alcoholism and Drug Abuse found that 30 per cent of teachers had 14-
to 15 year-old pupils who were stoned and that 40 per cent of girls
and 50 per cent of boys ages 15 to 16 had smoked marijuana.

Concern about young potheads has inflamed passions ahead of a
parliamentary debate starting Wednesday on government proposals to
decriminalize use of cannabis and - under certain circumstances - sale
and production.

The move is part of a wider revision of Swiss narcotics laws that also
would provide permanent legal footing to the state's provision of
heroin to chronic addicts.

The nine-year-old heroin program, authorized to last until 2009,
allows around 1,300 hardened addicts to shoot up at approved centres
with government-provided heroin.

The annual cost of 11 million to 14.5 million Swiss francs (US$8
million-US$10.5 million) is covered by health insurance on the grounds
that addiction is an illness rather than a crime.

Although at first controversial - the United States and the U.N.
narcotics board remain critical - the program has won recognition at
home and abroad for cutting the crime and misery associated with addiction.

This has been accompanied by a spectacular fall in overdose-related
fatalities. Last year, reported deaths fell to a 16-year low of 167,
down 15.2 per cent from 2001 and just under half the 1994 peak of 399.
The number of addicts has remained stable at around 30,000.

"The whole debate about heroin has become much more reasonable because
the good experiences with the program calmed people's fears," says
Felix Gutzwiller, a professor at Zurich University's Institute for
Social and Preventive Medicine and a leading proponent of a liberal
drug policy.

"By contrast, people are now very nervous and emotional about
decriminalizing cannabis," he says.

An anticipated shift to the right in the Oct. 19 national elections
has brought a conservative tone to the cannabis debate. Gutzwiller
said he fears the lower house of the Swiss parliament will throw out
the proposed new law, which was approved by the upper house in
December 2001.

The government argues that at least 500,000 people out of a population
of 7 million are occasional or regular users and that police resources
are too stretched to enforce restrictive and outdated laws.

The government's Youth Commission on Monday also spoke out in favour
of decriminalization, saying that could focus more attention on
prevention.