Prescription Heroin

GENEVA (AP) - Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.

Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N.narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But governmentsas far away as Australia are beginning or considering their ownprograms modeled on the system, which is credited with reducing crimeand improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.

The heroin program has won wide support within Switzerland since it wasbegun 14 years ago to eliminate scenes of large groups of drug usersshooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and1990s.

"The aim is that the patients learn howto function in society," he said, adding that after two to three yearsin the program, one-third of the patients start abstinence-programs andone-third change to methadone treatment.

"Thanks to thispolicy we don't have open drug scenes anymore," said AndreasKaesermann, a spokesman for the Social Democrat Party, part of thecoalition government.

Health insurance pays for the bulk ofthe program, which costs 26 million Swiss francs ($22 million) a year.All residents in Switzerland are required to have health insurance,with the government paying insurance premiums for those who cannotafford it.

"It's wrong that the health insurance pays forthis," said Alain Hauert, spokesman for the right-wing Swiss People'sParty. He said the state should invest more money into prevention andlaw enforcement.

Crimes committed by heroin addicts have dropped 60 percent since the program began in 1994, according to the Federal Office of Public Health says.

And, Zullino said, patients reduce consumption of other narcotics oncethey start the heroin program and suffer less from psychiatricdisorders.

But, he added, "the idea has never been to liberalize heroin. It's considered a medicine and used as such."

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