Heroin Legalization Program Approved By Swiss Voters
GENEVA — The world’s most comprehensive legalized heroin program became permanent Sunday with overwhelming approval from Swiss voters who simultaneously rejected the decriminalization of marijuana.

The nearly 1,300 selected addicts, who have been unhelped by other therapies, visit one of the centers twice a day to receive the carefully measured dose of heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

They keep their paraphernalia in cups labeled with their names and use the equipment and clean needles to inject themselves _ four at a time _ under the supervision of a nurse, and also receive counseling from psychiatrists and social workers.

Sixty-eight percent of the 2.26 million Swiss voters casting ballots approved making the heroin program permanent.

By contrast, around 63.2 percent of voters voted against the marijuana proposal, which was based on a separate citizens’ initiative to decriminalize the consumption of marijuana and growing the plant for personal use.

Jo Lang, a Green Party member of parliament from the central city of Zug, said he was disappointed in the failure of the marijuana measure because it means 600,000 people in Switzerland will be treated as criminals because they use cannabis.

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

The government, which opposed the marijuana proposal, said it feared that liberalizing cannabis could cause problems with neighboring countries.

Talk about “sending a wrong message to the children”!  Don’t use cannabis, or we’ll arrest you, but if you get into heroin, we’ll give you a nice place to shoot up some free smack.  In a strange way, the Swiss voters just said that cannabis use isn’t addictive.  They had to take action against heroin because those people got addicted and would shoot up in the city parks, but apparently cannabis isn’t enough of a problem for the Swiss people to think it needs a harm reduction solution.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for clean needle exchange programs and maintenance heroin programs and I really don’t even mind if the government pays for it.  But to accept that treatment of heroin while maintaining a prohibition against cannabis seems insane to me.  I’d bet if you legalized the cannabis, you’d end up with less heroin addicts over the long term, too.

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Maia Szalavitz: Obama Drug Czar Pick: No Recovery from War on Drugs?
Unfortunately, Ramstad may be a drug warrior in recovering person’s clothing. There is one issue that has consistently separated those who put science and saving lives in front of politics. That is needle exchange programs for addicts to prevent the spread of HIV and other blood borne illnesses.

Even President Clinton now says he was “wrong” when he ignored the recommendations of every scientific and medical organization in the world that has examined the question — from the AMA to the World Health Organization — and refused to lift the federal ban on funding.

While Obama has said that he favors federal funding, the last thing we need is another drug czar to talk him out of it.

Ramstad looks like that person. I am awaiting comment from his office to see if he has changed his position, but his history on the issue isn’t good. In 1992, he said, “Federal funds should be used to get people off drugs not facilitate drug abuse…let’s support programs that save lives, not destroy lives.” By then, dozens of studies from around the world already suggested that clean needle programs not only reduce HIV, but attract addicts into recovery.

Ramstad also — again, against the evidence — opposes medical marijuana and supports federal policing and prosecution of providers and patients in the states that have made it legal. These states have not seen the rise in teen drug use that opponents like the Congressman predicted.

There’s simply no evidence that allowing sick people to get needed medication conflicts with helping addicts. Obama has said he does not support these prosecutions — will Ramstad push him in the wrong direction here, too? In an economic crisis, do we really want to spend federal time and money locking up medical marijuana providers and sick people?

While Ramstad has opposed some interdiction efforts and called for more treatment funding, someone who doesn’t even believe that addicts have a right to life if they aren’t in treatment is not the kind of recovering person that I want representing me as drug czar.

That’s not change, President Obama — that’s more of the same. Don’t make the mistake that Bill Clinton did and install a drug czar who will ignore science and push dogma.

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