6 ms·

As a Swiss person who spent a few years in the 90s going to primary school on Langstrasse, watching junkies shoot up, and having to be careful in city parks to

As a Swiss person who spent a few years in the 90s going to primary school on Langstrasse, watching junkies shoot up, and having to be careful in city parks to not step on the mountains of used needles… that is about the WORST idea I have ever heard. The Swiss experiment in the 80s and 90s was a complete disaster, and it wasn't until the 2010s that that part of Zurich was finally cleaned up. It attracted the worst junkies from all around Europe, it created a crime wave in a country that was crime-free. It didn't work, either, it just led to more addiction, death, and despair.

wespiser_2018 5y ago
That's fair: I've been to Zurich in 2019 a few times, and I was amazed by how clean it was. Remarkable. Even compared to a US, east coast city, it was much more cleaner than anything I've seen. However that doesn't mean the problems don't exist. I do think I got the dates wrong. What I'd like the US to do is adopt a similar liberal approach to prescribing medication assisted therapy, and go as far as we need to go in finding the medication that work for people, like is done today in CH. I don't think the "free firezone" approach is a good idea (akin to "hampsterdam" in The Wire), but getting addicts healthcare and a medically supervised substitute is what I meant. The big part of that in the US, IMO, is fighting the social stigma around adopting science based approaches large scale addiction management, and right now the only acceptable solution is to get people off drugs, then have them OD when they get back on. There is a better way!
riffraff 5y ago
FWIW, used needles were a common sight in my childhood and youth in the '80s/'90s in Italy too, and we didn't have such policy. I've literally not seen a used needle in at least a decade, but again, I'm not sure it's because of policy, it seems more likely that people have just, for the most cases, switched to different drugs.
- stuaxo 5y ago
  Same in the UK, from Brighton and there has been heroine here on and off, certainly a used to see needles in the 80s.
- nmfisher 5y ago
  Used needles are still a common sight in Melbourne.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    I grew up in a rural town in NSW and we kids had hardly ever heard of hard drugs let alone ever having been offered any. At best, all we knew of them was that it was an overseas problem and that there were strange opium dens up in Asia somewhere. We were never warned about drugs in primary and secondary school as there weren't any - with the exception of cigarettes, which some kids tried down behind the school toilet block but that was more a defiance of authority than a real problem. Drugs were never the topic of conversation amongst us at school. The first time I came across discarded needles and syringes was quite some years later when I was walking around the Colosseum in Rome. It was a bit of a shock to see them in such a renowned place. I am forever grateful that we kids grew up in such innocence of drugs (that wasn't true of other dangers however).
    - nmfisher 5y ago
      The sad thing is that that’s probably no longer the case, it sounds like ice/meth is a big problem in rural Australia.
      - hilbert42 5y ago
        Tragically, that's ever so true, rural country towns both in the US and Australia are now in the vanguard of the drug epidemic. It's not only ice/meth but also opioids thanks in part to the Sacklers. Fortunately, my family seems to have escaped the illicit drug problem and I no longer live in a rural area, nevertheless sometimes I wish I had Dr Who's tardis to escape back to a much simpler time - at least for a short respite anyway. :-)
- diordiderot 5y ago
  In Toronto you're 10 meters from a needle at all times! (Fake number, but they're everywhere)
- Fnoord 5y ago
  I grew up near the heroin junkie city of The Netherlands (Heerlen) which also attracted a lot of junkies from the Aachen area. I got a fear of needles likely influenced by the needles on the streets. Thanks also to everyone mentioning which cities contain needles on the ground, I forgot about it being a possible thing (I would not visit such a city, and I live/work near Amsterdam, go figure). Getting my COVID-19 shots was a serious hurdle because of my fear of needles. It also likely influenced my disgust of prostitution (a lot of the female heroin junkies turned to prostitution). Most of these people were homeless, too. They (local gov) tried a lot of things to fix the problem. Play classical music at the gathering area (the train/bus station). Free methadone. Free needles. Free heroin I don't believe was tried. Give the homeless a task like selling a newspaper called 'street journal', watching everyone pass by looking down on the seller. Cynical me would say these people passed away. I met one of them at a work reintegration company, and I recognized him right away. He had HIV. Though this was in ~2006. I let him listen to one of my favourite music at that time, and I remember he enjoyed it. I learned of the popular drugs in first of high school (age 12), as part of education (alcohol, cannabis, XTC, heroin/cocaine). In my late young adulthood I ended up trying quite some drugs. Mostly psychedelics, never heroin (or cocaine), and amphetamine only once (from which I know how it feels to be an asshole). They are far too addicting, and destroy lives. I've been addicted to nicotine/cigarettes though, but so has 25+% (?) of society. It was tough getting rid of that habit (I am probably still 'addicted to it' just not practicing). Lots of good movies (and books) were made about heroin addiction. Wir Kinder Von Bahnhof Zoo. Requiem For A Dream. Trainspotting. Just to name a few. The social setting a (young) person is in is going to have a huge influence. Sure, its also a matter of morals and values and parenthood, but how can I affect which friends my children are going to have in school?
  - ldiracdelta 5y ago
    When faced with the prospect of losing a child to heroin based on his friend crowd, you can take action. My family moved to a different states to do a friend-group reset for one of my uncles. Kids are worth fighting for. Do whatever you have to.
- anthk 5y ago
  Ditto in Spain.
si1entstill 5y ago
Is it better now? Were there over initiatives that played a role?
- kenneth 5y ago
  Yes, they shut it down in 1992, but it took another 15 years or so to fully clean up the mess it created.
  - otherme123 5y ago
    This puzzles me. The Medication Assisted Treatment (metadone and buprenorphine) started in 1991. The Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) started in 1994. People that failed the MAT were enroled into the HAT. Limited first HAT experiments were found sucessful, and thus expanded in 1999. In 2008 both approaches entered the law. All data from here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00412-0 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00412-0 , but you can found it in a lot of papers. The opioid/heroin epidemic that hit the whole Europe, took place in the 80's, with AIDS making it worse at later 80's and early 90's, causing all countries in Europe to tackle the problem hard starting in the early 90's. Yet you claim that HAT not only was shutdown in early 90's but that it was the thing that created the mess. Dates don't add up, sorry. Maybe you are talking about a different swiss experiment, and not the internationally famous HAT.
    - kenneth 5y ago
      The first phase of the experiment was to have a free zone in the Platzspitz park, with a needle exchanges, and no interference to drug sales and use. The park became known as "needle park." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platzspitz_park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platzspitz_park They shut it down in '92, which led to junkies spreading throughout the city, particularly on and around Langstrasse. It wasn't until a real crackdown that things got better. They tried a few approaches like the treatments you mentioned, but that's very different than the laissez-faire decriminalization experiment that blew up in everyone's face. There's a good documentary or article about the whole thing I meant to recommend but I can't find it at the moment.
HWR_14 5y ago
> It attracted the worst junkies from all around Europe, it created a crime wave in a country that was crime-free. Well, that's the issue. No one area within a zone of free travel can exclusively do this. That is, if Ohio did it, druggies throughout the US would go there. But, as I understood the idea, the free drugs were required to be consumed on premises under the watch of a professional. So why would any drugs even leave the facility.
- klyrs 5y ago
  > ...why would any drugs even leave the facility. They wouldn't need to. Supply follows demand. When you get enough users in one spot, you'll find dealers. I'm strongly anti-prohibition and I think safe supply and safe injection sites are crucial, but there's no silver bullet. Every simple solution will cause knock-on problems.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    Why would addicts pay dealers when they could get it for free? Genuine question.
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      Typically quantity is limited at safe sites. You can use, but you don't get to blow a whole 8 ball in one go.
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      That's the theory and it's been shown to work to some extent. The trouble is the drug problem is very complex and essentially intractable. The best we can do is to aim for harm minimization whilst understanding that the minimum will never be a deep notch but will always be shallow.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      I've paid more money to drink alcohol in a location I prefer countless times, so I'm sure some paid for the privilege of doing their drugs somewhere more interesting than the clinic.

wespiser_2018 5y ago

That's fair: I've been to Zurich in 2019 a few times, and I was amazed by how clean it was. Remarkable. Even compared to a US, east coast city, it was much more cleaner than anything I've seen. However that doesn't mean the problems don't exist. I do think I got the dates wrong. What I'd like the US to do is adopt a similar liberal approach to prescribing medication assisted therapy, and go as far as we need to go in finding the medication that work for people, like is done today in CH. I don't think the "free firezone" approach is a good idea (akin to "hampsterdam" in The Wire), but getting addicts healthcare and a medically supervised substitute is what I meant. The big part of that in the US, IMO, is fighting the social stigma around adopting science based approaches large scale addiction management, and right now the only acceptable solution is to get people off drugs, then have them OD when they get back on. There is a better way!

riffraff 5y ago

FWIW, used needles were a common sight in my childhood and youth in the '80s/'90s in Italy too, and we didn't have such policy. I've literally not seen a used needle in at least a decade, but again, I'm not sure it's because of policy, it seems more likely that people have just, for the most cases, switched to different drugs.

stuaxo 5y ago
Same in the UK, from Brighton and there has been heroine here on and off, certainly a used to see needles in the 80s.
nmfisher 5y ago
Used needles are still a common sight in Melbourne.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  I grew up in a rural town in NSW and we kids had hardly ever heard of hard drugs let alone ever having been offered any. At best, all we knew of them was that it was an overseas problem and that there were strange opium dens up in Asia somewhere. We were never warned about drugs in primary and secondary school as there weren't any - with the exception of cigarettes, which some kids tried down behind the school toilet block but that was more a defiance of authority than a real problem. Drugs were never the topic of conversation amongst us at school. The first time I came across discarded needles and syringes was quite some years later when I was walking around the Colosseum in Rome. It was a bit of a shock to see them in such a renowned place. I am forever grateful that we kids grew up in such innocence of drugs (that wasn't true of other dangers however).
  - nmfisher 5y ago
    The sad thing is that that’s probably no longer the case, it sounds like ice/meth is a big problem in rural Australia.
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      Tragically, that's ever so true, rural country towns both in the US and Australia are now in the vanguard of the drug epidemic. It's not only ice/meth but also opioids thanks in part to the Sacklers. Fortunately, my family seems to have escaped the illicit drug problem and I no longer live in a rural area, nevertheless sometimes I wish I had Dr Who's tardis to escape back to a much simpler time - at least for a short respite anyway. :-)
diordiderot 5y ago
In Toronto you're 10 meters from a needle at all times! (Fake number, but they're everywhere)
Fnoord 5y ago
I grew up near the heroin junkie city of The Netherlands (Heerlen) which also attracted a lot of junkies from the Aachen area. I got a fear of needles likely influenced by the needles on the streets. Thanks also to everyone mentioning which cities contain needles on the ground, I forgot about it being a possible thing (I would not visit such a city, and I live/work near Amsterdam, go figure). Getting my COVID-19 shots was a serious hurdle because of my fear of needles. It also likely influenced my disgust of prostitution (a lot of the female heroin junkies turned to prostitution). Most of these people were homeless, too. They (local gov) tried a lot of things to fix the problem. Play classical music at the gathering area (the train/bus station). Free methadone. Free needles. Free heroin I don't believe was tried. Give the homeless a task like selling a newspaper called 'street journal', watching everyone pass by looking down on the seller. Cynical me would say these people passed away. I met one of them at a work reintegration company, and I recognized him right away. He had HIV. Though this was in ~2006. I let him listen to one of my favourite music at that time, and I remember he enjoyed it. I learned of the popular drugs in first of high school (age 12), as part of education (alcohol, cannabis, XTC, heroin/cocaine). In my late young adulthood I ended up trying quite some drugs. Mostly psychedelics, never heroin (or cocaine), and amphetamine only once (from which I know how it feels to be an asshole). They are far too addicting, and destroy lives. I've been addicted to nicotine/cigarettes though, but so has 25+% (?) of society. It was tough getting rid of that habit (I am probably still 'addicted to it' just not practicing). Lots of good movies (and books) were made about heroin addiction. Wir Kinder Von Bahnhof Zoo. Requiem For A Dream. Trainspotting. Just to name a few. The social setting a (young) person is in is going to have a huge influence. Sure, its also a matter of morals and values and parenthood, but how can I affect which friends my children are going to have in school?
- ldiracdelta 5y ago
  When faced with the prospect of losing a child to heroin based on his friend crowd, you can take action. My family moved to a different states to do a friend-group reset for one of my uncles. Kids are worth fighting for. Do whatever you have to.
anthk 5y ago
Ditto in Spain.

si1entstill 5y ago

Is it better now? Were there over initiatives that played a role?

kenneth 5y ago
Yes, they shut it down in 1992, but it took another 15 years or so to fully clean up the mess it created.
- otherme123 5y ago
  This puzzles me. The Medication Assisted Treatment (metadone and buprenorphine) started in 1991. The Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) started in 1994. People that failed the MAT were enroled into the HAT. Limited first HAT experiments were found sucessful, and thus expanded in 1999. In 2008 both approaches entered the law. All data from here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00412-0 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00412-0 , but you can found it in a lot of papers. The opioid/heroin epidemic that hit the whole Europe, took place in the 80's, with AIDS making it worse at later 80's and early 90's, causing all countries in Europe to tackle the problem hard starting in the early 90's. Yet you claim that HAT not only was shutdown in early 90's but that it was the thing that created the mess. Dates don't add up, sorry. Maybe you are talking about a different swiss experiment, and not the internationally famous HAT.
  - kenneth 5y ago
    The first phase of the experiment was to have a free zone in the Platzspitz park, with a needle exchanges, and no interference to drug sales and use. The park became known as "needle park." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platzspitz_park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platzspitz_park They shut it down in '92, which led to junkies spreading throughout the city, particularly on and around Langstrasse. It wasn't until a real crackdown that things got better. They tried a few approaches like the treatments you mentioned, but that's very different than the laissez-faire decriminalization experiment that blew up in everyone's face. There's a good documentary or article about the whole thing I meant to recommend but I can't find it at the moment.

HWR_14 5y ago

> It attracted the worst junkies from all around Europe, it created a crime wave in a country that was crime-free. Well, that's the issue. No one area within a zone of free travel can exclusively do this. That is, if Ohio did it, druggies throughout the US would go there. But, as I understood the idea, the free drugs were required to be consumed on premises under the watch of a professional. So why would any drugs even leave the facility.

klyrs 5y ago
> ...why would any drugs even leave the facility. They wouldn't need to. Supply follows demand. When you get enough users in one spot, you'll find dealers. I'm strongly anti-prohibition and I think safe supply and safe injection sites are crucial, but there's no silver bullet. Every simple solution will cause knock-on problems.
- nindalf 5y ago
  Why would addicts pay dealers when they could get it for free? Genuine question.
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    Typically quantity is limited at safe sites. You can use, but you don't get to blow a whole 8 ball in one go.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    That's the theory and it's been shown to work to some extent. The trouble is the drug problem is very complex and essentially intractable. The best we can do is to aim for harm minimization whilst understanding that the minimum will never be a deep notch but will always be shallow.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    I've paid more money to drink alcohol in a location I prefer countless times, so I'm sure some paid for the privilege of doing their drugs somewhere more interesting than the clinic.