April 24, 1999

NOT DRUG-FREE, BUT PENALTY-FREE

From The Swiss ‘Tagblatt’
http://www.tagblatt.ch)
Survey of German Language Newspapers for April 24, 1999 Courtesy of Harald Lerch. Translated by Pat Dolan.

By Eleonore Baumberger

In no other area is there such a gulf between the law as it is written and practiced as the consumption of illegal drugs. According to figures from the Federal Ministry of Health, around 30,000 persons are regular consumers of ‘hard’ drugs such as cocaine and heroin. And 600,000 persons 15 to 39 years old have tried marihuana at least once.

(Marijuananews note: The population of Switzerland is around 7 million. For some reason it has a very high rate of hard drug use.)

The EKD (federal commission for drug questions) confirms that marihuana is consumed without any consciousness of breaking the law.

A revision of the 1951 drug law is irrelevant. That was shown when the electorate rejected the two opposing initiatives ‘Youth without drugs’ and ‘Droleg’. The public obviously support a practical drug policy.
(Marijuananews note: The first was a referendum to make prohibition the law of the land. It failed by a margin of 70%. The second was a referendum to legalize all drugs. It failed by a similar margin. Hence the legalization of marijuana is a moderate step in the Swiss context.)

Drug experts, particularly the members of the EKD, considered the question of decriminalization of consumption and dealing in small amounts of marihuana. The occasional consumption of marihuana, in the opinion of the experts, does not lead to the consumption of hard drugs. Nor is it so dangerous as the consumption of legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, and certain medications.

The decriminalization of illegal drugs is furthermore widespread in practice. A law forbidding consumption in principle, but winked at in practice, is in urgent need of revision.

The EKD is therefore suggesting that access to marihuana be legalized. It knows that a full decriminalization of soft drugs would come in for stiff political opposition. The commission proposes, therefore, a model in which legal access to marihuana would be granted, with regulations providing for the production and distribution, rejection of advertising, age limitation and eventual price stabilization.

This model, which could be the basis for the revision of the drug laws, corresponds broadly to the (rejected) Droleg Initiative, not for all drugs, however, but simply the ‘soft’ drugs.

A regulation, which partly legalizes marihuana, could, however, have chances of being passed into law. It would not only decriminalize conduct which is wide-spread, but would also lead to considerable savings in prosecution costs. This saving could then be applied to prevention measures.