Music

01.00.00.00

Man playing long horn, mountains, map of Switzerland

Clark:  These are the traditional images of Switzerland which have helped establish a picture postcard reputation.  

People shooting up

Scenes of degradation from one of the wealthiest countries on earth. 

00.33

Pretty much anytime of the day, any day of the week you can wander into this park in the Swiss capital Berne and see people injecting heroin.

Now a program which allows addicts to get heroin on prescription is being challenged by groups which claim that the Swiss government has in effect become a drug pusher.

Man in grey T-Shirt:  If you get the drugs from the government or you get the drugs on the street, they're always poison, you know.

01.01

Woman injecting in armpit, people smoking

Clark:  So the Swiss are being asked to say yes to a referendum which would end the legal prescription of heroin and other drugs of addiction.

Intv with Dr. Rihs

Super:

Dr. MARGARET RIHS

Heroin Prescription Program

Dr. Rihs:  What do you want?  The Mafia treatment or medical treatment?  If you want Mafia treatment vote yes, if you want medical treatment vote no.

01.17

Man doing Tai Chi, people doing Tai chi

Clark:  Over the years Swiss has adopted a highly flexible approach to drug law enforcement.  With 30,000 addicts in a population of seven million, Switzerland has a serious drug problem.

01.34

Clark to camera

Once upon a time this was the centre of the heroin trade in Zurich.  It was known as needle park.  Police turned a blind eye and addicts could come down here and buy heroin, even shoot up in the park and plenty did. 

01.46

The theory was that if they were all centred in the one place, it would be easy to control the trade but it certainly made it easier for addicts and for dealers.

But the whole scene quickly became unmanageable and started attracting just the sort of notoriety that the Swiss authorities definitely didn't want.

A couple of years ago they closed it down for the last time and by that stage Switzerland was already prescribing legal heroin to addicts. 

Woman coming through door, walks up to counter, picks up needle, prepares to inject

Evelyn has been using heroin on and off for the past twelve years.  She's one of about 800 addicts who currently buy their drugs from the government.  Twice a day she goes to this clinic in Berne for a hit.

02.28

Evelyn:  I could never cope with my life so well like now, I really can concentrate on the things which are important, well, life like everybody leads a life.

02.47

Clark:  She has to shoot up on site under strict supervision.

Close up needle going into arm, Evelyn injecting heroin

Evelyn:  First of all you have a warm feeling, it's really warm and you feel tired a little bit but really relaxed and if you feel fine.

03.13

Clark:  The heroin prescription program has taken addicts like Evelyn off the streets.

Evelyn:  In the streets I cost the people a lot of money, taxes and now I can support myself.  I even pay for the drugs myself. 

03.38

Intv with Evelyn

I was clean for let's say, between ten or twelve months which was the most and two or three days.  I've done at least 100 attempts to withdraw.

Travelling shots in police car

Thomas Hug:  So what we're going to do here is control everyone who looks like a drug user. If someone has any or some sort of needle, drugs on it, we arrest them and bring them back to the police station for another 24 hours.

04.11

Clark: Thomas Hug and his colleagues are part of the Zurich Police Force's Drug Squad.

04.36

Thomas Hug:  This is the Long Street that's the red like district.

04.41

Clark:  The city's drug scene is fragmented - most of the deals happen in back alleys or appartments. 

04.46

Thomas Hug:  Someone made a phone call to the police, there is a drop deal on Long Street on the third floor of an apartment house, going on now.

04.54

Cops entering

Policeman:  Go go go!

building, entering

flat, finding spoon

Clark:  There's no way of knowing what they'll find behind the door.

05.24

Policeman:  Passports please.

05.35

Clark:  They're looking for cocaine - the tip off could be revenge between dealers or even an attempt to divert police.

Clark:  It's police work which has more than its fair share of frustrations.

06.01

Policeman:  What's happened here it's exactly drug users situations. You see the spoon here with some remnants of cocaine, I think.  Also here, and the rest we are sure, has gone through the toilet.

Intv with Police Chief

Police Chief:  We closed down the open drug scene here in Zurich, in February 1995 more or less at the same time, these medical trials with prescription for heroin started. 

06.32

These trials helped us a lot, in so far that around 300 of the really heavy drug addicts have been absorbed by these trials and they got their heroin every day by medical doctors.

Evelyn cooking at restaurant, serving

Clark:  Switzerland's experiment with legal heroin has focused on a small number of long term addicts. Evelyn is still addicted to heroin, but since she's been getting legal supplies she's managed to cut her intake by two-thirds.

07.15

Now she's got a job working in a restaurant and somewhere to live.  She doesn't want to go back to life on the streets.

07.30

Evelyn:  The worst time was in winter when for instance, it was raining or cold or snowing and just waiting there and feeling bad, that was the first time actually. 

07.39

Intv with Evelyn

Or also the time when I had to humiliate myself before people in order to get some money.

Clark:  In what sense?  How?

Evelyn:  Begging in the streets for instance or even prostitution.  I didn't do that very much but I did it too and I hated myself for it.

Intv with Dr. Margaret Rihs

Dr. Rihs:  The most positive aspect has been an improvement in health, a relatively low death rate.

08.15

Clark:  Dr. Margaret Rihs is the woman in charge of the prescription program.

08.25

Dr. Rihs:  The first thing, we kept people from dying, that's the first important result. 

I mean what sense is there in having all these wonderful treatment program and the people you want to treat are already dead.  So that's I think a very big result, we should really emphasise that.

Evelyn serving food

Clark:  There are other benefits, addicts like Evelyn who get legal heroin commit fewer crimes and they're more likely to stay in treatment - that's critical if the eventual aim is to get them off drugs permanently.

08.50

Clark:  Can you see a day when you won't need heroin again?

09.06

Intv with Evelyn

Evelyn:  Yeah, the day I can replace it and the day I can take a choice.  When I can choose between taking or not taking.  So it happened with the cocaine to me, that gave me hope. 

I haven't been taking cocaine anymore now for two years and I've absolutely no need to take it.  I'm not looking for it and I don't feel anything when I think of it.

Boris, wife and two kids singing at table

Clark:  Despite some obvious pluses from the legal heroin program there are many within Swiss society who want to put a stop to it.

09.48

Boris Piske has a lot in common with Evelyn, including a decade on hard drugs.

09.59

Intv with Boris Piske (man in grey t-shirt)

Boris:  I used several drugs - medicine, alcohol, hashish, marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methadone from the state.

Clark:  How did you pay for all this?

Boris:  I was a prostitute my life to homosexual men.

Clark:  How long did you do that for?

Boris:  About six years.  I was working at the train station at Zurich, I had a lot of connections, rich friends.  A lot of money and cars. 

First years I thought I had a good life but after this time I wake up one day and I saw, now I'm a drug addict and it goes like this.

Wife and kid eating, intv continues with Boris

Clark:  Now married with two young children, Boris gave up drugs seven years ago and he didn't need a heroin prescription program to do it.

Boris:  I was listening to the word of God and then I changed my life.  I knew that only Jesus can help me to keep my life clean from all the sins and drugs and all the things that I saw during this time of drug taking.

11.15

Green landscape,

Singing

house, people

in room singing

Clark::  Boris found God on the streets and now he's part of a small community which bases its drug rehabilitation on total abstinence and strong Christian values.

11.35

Singing

Clark:  Paul Stettler runs the centre.  The rule here is no drugs at all, right down to decaffeinated coffee. 

Clark: They represent the core of people campaigning for an end to heroin prescription.

12.09

Intv with Paul Stettler

Stettler:  Drug addicts need much more than heroin.  It can never be the solution for them.  They have to be brought away from the drug using. 

You see the motivation to go into the heroin program is to get the heroin but we should help for another motivation, we should help to leave the heroin and this is not done.

People in room singing

Clark:  Trouble is, the path of total abstinence offers nothing to those who try and fail.

12.49

Intv with Dr. Margaret Rihs

Dr. Rihs:  I think people who are against the prescription of substances to addicts do not have a clear idea about the whole picture and they do not have the responsibility of taking care of the health of the population.

12.55

Clark:  How much damage could they do?

Dr. Rihs:  Well, they could kill people.  As I said, support Mafia, this will certainly support organised crime, if the initiative is accepted it will put 14 or 15,000 people out on the streets with all the crime that is associated with them and it will kill people.

City landscape

Bells

street and

buildings, people in park

Clark:  Switzerland's drug problems and its causes are not unique.  The country's very affluence makes it an obvious target.  The pressure to conform, which has brought prosperity to so many has perhaps alienated others.

Clark to camera

Clark:  The battle over legalised heroin in Switzerland is not just an argument about who pays to clean up the mess left behind by hard drugs.

14.06

For prohibitionists it's as much a moral issue as a practical problem.  It also raises some fundamental questions about where the responsibilities of the state start and finish. 

Ultimately it's a questions not just of how kind the society should be but what kind of society the Swiss want.

Men being frisked

Clark:  It's a debate which pits the perfect world against reality.

As a policeman, Thomas Hug knows that making drugs illegal doesn't stop people using them or supplying them.  He's out combing the streets, trying to keep track of who's buying and who's selling.

14.30

Clark:  Is there a lot of stuff around at the moment?

14.53

Clark talking to Thomas Hug, night time

Thomas Hug:  Yes, there is a lot of stuff all the time.  I mean the Federal police can collect 130 kilos and we don't see the situation here change.

Clark:  It makes no difference?

Thomas Hug:  No difference at all.

Intv with Police Chief

Police Chief:  If this referendum would succeed it would really have a big negative impact on the drug scene - a big negative impact.  I really do hope that this referendum will not succeed. 

15.14

The result from the police point of view would be that once again we would have a new open drug scene in the city of Zurich and probably as well in other cities of Switzerland and for sure these would be again large open drug scenes.

Boris with guitar

Singing with guitar

15.53

Clark:  It's easy to understand why Boris wants a total ban on the supply of hard drugs.  He's sees the prescription program institutionalising the terror he finally managed to escape.

Intv with Boris, Paul Stettler sitting beside him

Boris:  One day you'll find a bus driver, he inject heroin.  One day you'll find somebody who is working in a very difficult job, he's a drug user. 

16.20

One day you're going to the hospital, you may have a heart operation and the doctor, he's a drug user. 

One day it will be like this and that's a big problem.  One day our children will have teachers, they'll be drug users. 

Clark talking to Evelyn, Intv with Evelyn

Clark:  But what worked for Boris hasn't worked for Evelyn.

Evelyn:  I would be forced to go to the streets again, maybe lose my job sooner or later.  I'm quite sure that I would lose my job again.  And I would be maybe at the same point as three years ago.

Intv with Dr. Rihs

Dr. Rihs:  It's a basic issue.  Do you give support and perspective to people who are deeply in drugs or do you feel that this part of society does not exist and we do not have to take care of them.

Man sweeping up park, man on bench

Clark:  Only in Switzerland would you see heroin addicts dutifully sweeping up their empty syringe packets under police supervision. 

17.42

And if the country votes to end legal heroin prescription, many more of its streets and parks might once again become shooting galleries.

ENDS

18.10