I have just returned from a short business trip to Geneva in Switzerland and apart from the usual chatter about the disasters that have befallen the banking system – including such titans as UBS – the chatter in the cafes was about voters’ recent decision to allow heroin to be given to drug addicts in medical centres. Switzerland’s experiments with a more liberal approach to drug use has not been without unfortunate result: I remember that some time ago, there was a park in Zurich that got the unfortunate title, “needle park”, on account of the number of folk who used to congregate there from all over to get their fix of heroin. But perhaps that is a sort of example of how, if you have “public spaces” – owned by the nation and hence owned by no-one in particular – what might be a matter of private behaviour can lead to “negative externalities”. The solution, maybe, is for drug users to indulge their habits on private property with the consent of the owners of said; then the issue ceases to be one on which the polity feels a need to express a view one way or the other.
But the Swiss are nothing if not contradictory and the locals do not seem to share a very coherent conception of what the state can or should be able to tell people to do, but I do sense that there is less of a nanny state culture than in Britain. The locals tell me that there is, still, more of a culture of self-responsibility than in some other European nations. But the contradictions are odd: while approving the heroin measure, Swiss electors rejected a proposal to make marijuana legal and to be able to grow it for personal use. And yet this is a nation where smoking continues to happen in restaurants; firearms ownership is far more liberal than in the UK; ditto things like knives and swords; bank secrecy, while not quite as solid as before, remains; and the nation, to its credit, remains cussedly uninterested in joining the EU or allowing itself to be bullied by tax collectors in places such as Germany and the US.
And the chocolate tastes pretty good as well. Yummm…..
I was under the impression that firearm ownership in Switzerland was mandatory, that seems to me to be far from liberal.
That applies only to those men of a certain required to serve for a short period in the country’s armed services and then to maintain a minimal degree of preparedness on a reserve basis. That is a fair point; even so, gun ownership, even for those who do not have to serve, is far more liberal than say, the UK.
Mind you, pretty much everthing is more liberal than in Britain these days.
T
Militia service is mandatory for Swiss able bodied men. They are conscripted into boot camp at age 18, and until a certain age (forgot which, about 35 IIRC), they have to participate in militia training for a few weeks once every year. And of course they have to show up with their own firearm. If you’re a conscientious objector, you get to serve with a stick instead of a rifle.
Switzerland is weeeeeeird. On the other hand, they have not ever been invaded and defeated (Napoleon doesn’t count as they wanted to be invaded and didn’t resist).
they may have resisted the EU but they did fall to the UN back in 2002 🙁
Am I hallucinating or did Britain not used to
dish up prescripions for Heroin back in the 60s when the “Problem” was tiny, but somehow changed policy around the 1967 Drugs Act?
Guy will tell me no doubt. 😉
Now we give out Morphine scrips. A drug that is even worse for you apparently, than the heroin you already take.And withdrawal is worse.
They even let you have tincture of cannabis to paint on your feet as a cure for corns too, i’m told!
Legalise it all now!
A shame about the Dutch going wobbly over Cannabis.
RAB:
I was under the impression that the NHS was dishing out heroin to registered addicts as late as the 1980’s or early 90’s.
I don’t know what that would accomplish here, though: there’s no methadone and no limited-dose therapy for our primary drugs of abuse. And we keep hearing that heroin is going to come back Real Soon Now(tm), but I don’t remember ever actually seeing it. All of the narcotics that I’ve ever seen abused seem to be diverted or stolen prescriptions.
FWIW.
As for Swiss firearms laws: I was under the impression that the militia had the rifles they were issued and one sealed package of ammunition, with fairly strict penalties if that package was found opened or the rifle taken out of the house without authorization.
Switzerland may have looser general firearms laws than the average for Europe, but IMHO that’s a “tallest midget at the circus” distinction.
I remember a guy called Dr John Marks who pioneered prescribing heroin in Merseyside in the late 1980s or early 90s. He was always well spoken of and seemed to be genuinely trying to do something at the time. A Google search for his name would probably turn up something about the results of his work.