“Major reservations” about Switzerland’s new law on drugs have been expressed by the Swiss Episcopal Conference, which issued a statement on the matter in recent days. Discussion of the new law in the Swiss National Council has meanwhile been postponed. The Swiss bishops criticise the new law on two main counts: its State’s abdication of the “the tasks incumbent on it and its social consequences”. Emphasizing the need for the problems of drugs to be considered as a whole, they underline the gravity of alcohol abuse, “which represents a form of dependency just as strong as the use of cannabis”, and they point out that it is “the State’s duty to formulate laws that do not encourage such forms of dependency”. On the contrary, “by weakening the law say the bishops the State is no longer fulfilling its obligations”. Moreover, by a law of this type, “the repressive aspect is deliberately renounced, while the support and assistance to which drug addicts have a right is reduced to a ‘social aid to survival'”. This will cause, in the bishops’ view, “an extremely high economic cost” for the social structures. “The problem of the life-dependency of drug addicts they conclude – does not seem to have been taken sufficiently seriously”. They therefore propose that “serious programmes of abstinence for all those who still have the will to quit drugs be promoted”.
