The New York Times - December 1, 1989
Burton Bollag, Special to the New York Times

While the United States and other countries intensify their war on drugs, two European countries, Switzerland and the Netherlands, are adhering to a much more liberal approach to their drug problems.

Zurich, Switzerland's biggest city, decided two years ago to tolerate a thriving drug scene in a park behind the central railroad station. Every day hundreds of drug addicts buy and use heroin and cocaine openly in the park, known as the Platzspitz, undisturbed by the police.

A federally financed health center in the park distributes 6,000 syringes in exchange for used ones each day in an attempt to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Zurich's policy has critics, and even supporters are uneasy with the bazaar-like attraction the open drug scene in the Platzspitz may have on the young.

Trade in Clean Soup Spoons

Addicts, many gaunt and unwashed, congregate on a park promenade along the gentle, green Limmat River. Dealers walk through the crowd hawking "sugar" and "cokie," as heroin and cocaine are called here.

A small business has even sprung up in the park. Clean soup spoons, their handles bent back, are neatly laid out on about a half-dozen improvised tables in the promenade. After buying their dose, addicts go to the tables to boil their drug solutions in the spoons before straining them through a bit of cigarette filter and injecting them.

In exchange, those addicts who provide the spoons get to keep the used filters. Five or six provide enough drug residue for one injectable dose.

In Rotterdam, the Netherlands' giant port city, the police keep heroin dealers off the streets, but for the last four years one police commander has followed a policy of tolerating drug peddling in dealers' apartments in one neighborhood.

Keeping Drugs 'Within Limits'

The police keep a close watch on the so-called house dealers and arrest them if they allow their clients to become a nuisance in the neighborhood or if they sell poor quality, adulterated heroin.

Both cases represent a decision by the authorities that arresting or harassing drug users and small-time dealers is counterproductive. Those approaches lead to more petty crime by pushing prices up, officials said, and hinder efforts to reach addicts with social services like AIDS prevention.

"We've found out that when you leave drug users pretty much in peace and provide methadone, then the drug problem stays within limits," said Chief Inspector Tiebbe Reitsma, who has been named police chief of one of Rotterdam's six city districts. He was referring to the heroin substitute that is used to help users of the drug fight their addiction.

Officials in both countries agreed however, that their drug problems occur in much more middle-class and homogeneous populations than that of the United States. Their solutions therefore may or may not be applicable to the American situation.

Concentration on Big Dealers

In the Netherlands, although possession of narcotics in small quantities is technically illegal, the police follow a policy of not arresting people for that offense. Switzerland is considered likely to become the first European country to completely decriminalize the use and possession of small amounts of narcotics, possibly as early as next spring.

Swiss officials do not suggest that decriminalization is a solution to their large drug problem. But many said it would stop the Swiss police and the courts from wasting their energies going after small fry.

"This is one step that may make it easier to concentrate the fight on bigger dealers and to help addicts," said Dr. Francois van der Linde, chairman of the Swiss Federal Drug Commission, which recommended decriminalization in a report in June.

In Zurich, the police say the city's policy has attracted many drug users and dealers from outside Zurich and from neighboring West Germany.

Needle Exchanges and AIDS

But the majority of officials and social workers in both countries appear to see no better solution. And they say their policies have had some measure of success.

That is particularly true in preventing the spread of the AIDS virus through needle sharing. In Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, health officials said they have had a large degree of success reducing the number of new infections by that route, which in many Western countries is a major way that AIDS is spread.

For several years those three countries have had large, active needle-exchange programs, held in the places where addicts congregate. The needle exchanges and counseling are made possible by the liberal approach, supporters said. They said fear of arrest would otherwise keep addicts from dealing with health and social workers.

Dutch officials said the number of heroin addicts in their country had declined in recent years. In Rotterdam, their average age has risen to about 30, officials said. "The heroin addicts are aging," said Chief Inspector Reitsma. "It seems the young people are more aware of the drug risks and are more careful." But he warned that the young may be turning more to cocaine.

Support Services for Addicts

He also attributed the decrease in heroin use to the Netherlands' almost total tolerance of marijuana and hashish. That approach, many Dutch drug experts said, allows the soft drug milieu to remain separate from that of the hard drugs.

Supporters of the liberal Dutch approach fear European integration at the end of 1992 will put more pressure on the country to come in line with the stricter approach of major European countries, especially West Germany, France and Britain.

But Prof. Anton van Kalmthout, a criminologist at Tillberg University in the Netherlands, said that in several years the rest of Europe will adopt some of the more liberal Dutch approach. "The AIDS panic is sweeping over Europe, and the Dutch policy is seen as the best to stem the spread of AIDS," he said.

**While the United States and other countries intensify their war on drugs, two European countries, Switzerland and the Netherlands, are adhering to a much more liberal approach to their drug problems.

KEYWORDS: DRUG ADDICTION AND ABUSE; ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS); COCAINE; HEROIN

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