Praise for Swiss heroin trial: a second chance for addicts

CLARE NULLIS reports on the success of the Swiss heroin trial.

ZURICH: Marco, a soft spoken 30year old, has been hooked on heroin
nearly half his life. Finally, he wants to quit. The courage he needs
to start over comes from a familiar source: heroin.

Three times a day, Marco enters a nondescript Zurich office building.
He picks up a syringe, needle and swabs and sits in one of five office
chairs. He shoots up.

As the drug courses into his bloodstream, a medical doctor stands by.
Marco's drug supplier is none other than the Swiss Government.

Marco is one of about 1000 junkies in a staterun program that
prescribes heroin to hardcore addicts in hopes of guiding them back
into mainstream society and encouraging them to kick their deadly
habit.

The threeyear experiment, while controversial, has rendered
impressive results. Nearly 90 of the addicts have entered programs to
help them fully withdraw from the drug, although it's too soon to
judge the success of their efforts. What is perhaps even more
substantial are the sideeffects for the junkies: lower rates of AIDS
and other infectious diseases and a dramatic drop in crime, saving the
taxpayers money.

Director of Crossline, one of 17 drug centres across Switzerland, Urs
Vontobel, says "The crime situation is much better, and the program's
cheap. And, above all, it works."

Marco and about 40 other addicts treated by Crossline each pay 15
francs ($A13.60) for a day's supply of heroin.

The centre's clean, if not spartan, atmosphere is unlike the filthy
Zurich rail yard that was a notorious junkie crash site until
authorities dispersed the users in 1995. A doctor supervises the users
as they inject themselves. Many of them will chat with other addicts,
but the clinic is not a social centre.

Alcohol is not allowed inside and no heroin can leave the building.
The drug is stored in a safe, behind locked doors. Dealers and other
hangerson are not allowed to gather outside.

The addicts meet counsellors, who help them find housing and odd jobs
and guide them toward withdrawal.

A review of the nationwide program says that at the outset, more
than 66 per cent of the addicts lived off illegal activities, like
prostitution and drug peddling. By the end of 1996, this fell to 10
per cent.

During the first six months of the program, the number of crimes
committed by the addicts fell about 60 per cent.

"I don't have to resort to crime and I can get cheap and clean heroin
when I need it," Marco says. "I now have thetime and the will to plan
my life ahead."

Marco, a lanky man with wavy dark hair, left home at 16 after his
mother died; he lost contact with his father. He fell into the drug
scene and began selling heroin.

By mid 1995, he was a hardened addict. He had been hospitalised once
for an overdose and served four months in jail for dealing.
Authorities then made him an offer. He vould get cheap heroin as long
as he showed up at the centre. There were no conditions, other than
that he stop dealing.

The basic belief underlying Switzerland's heroin program is that it's
30,000 or so addicts are not criminals, but people in need of help.
That liberal approach is opposed by the Association for Youth Without
Drugs, which argues that abstinence is the only way to fight drug use.
It is sponsoring a national referendum to ban all staterun drug
programs, which will go before voters in September. Vontobel, the
Crossline director, says such a course would be an "absolute
catastrophe".

"I used to work in abstinence therapy. I know how it can fail. I know
many people just can't do it. I know people who died because of that,"
he says. "At least our program is a success in the respect in that all
these people are still alive."

Switzerland's drug deaths dropped from 399 in 1994 to 312 last year.

Marco has managed to keep an apartment and occasionally work he
funds his habit with welfare payments.

Now he is focusing on the next step toward withdrawal. In September,
he will enter a twoyear therapy course at a farmhouse in Italy, where
he intends to wean himself off heroin. "For everyone there comes a
time to stop. And now it's time for me," he says.

"Otherwise I'll just die in some gutter somewhere." AP
[unquote]