Swiss Miss

The world's most comprehensive legalized heroin program became permanent with overwhelming approval from Swiss voters who simultaneously rejected the decriminalization of marijuana. Well, at least their priorities are straight!

The heroin program, started in 1994, is offered in 23 centers across Switzerland. It has helped eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s and is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts by allowing them to shoot up in 23 centers across Switzerland.

The nearly 1,300 selected addicts, who have been unhelped by other therapies, visit one of the centers twice a day to receive the carefully measured dose of heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory. Because that's the only way to deal with heroin addicts as far as the Swiss can tell. They keep their paraphernalia in cups labeled with their names and use the equipment and clean needles to inject themselves — four at a time — under the supervision of a nurse, and also receive counseling from psychiatrists and social workers, who must make them just feel terrible about scoring on the government dime.

Their aim is to help the addicts learn how to function in society., but when the flag gives you free smack, it's hard to see how they're going to function other than stoned.

The United States and the U.N. narcotics board have criticized the program as potentially fueling drug abuse, but it has attracted attention from governments as far away as Australia and Canada, which in recent years have started or are considering their own programs modeled on the system. The Netherlands started a smaller program in 2006, and it serves nearly 600 patients. Britain has allowed individual doctors to prescribe heroin since the 1920s, but it has been running trials similar to the Swiss approach in recent years. Belgium, Germany, Spain and Canada have been running trial programs too.

68% of the over two million Swiss voters casting ballots approved making the heroin program permanent. By contrast, around 63.2% of voters voted against the marijuana proposal, which was based on a separate citizens' initiative to decriminalize the consumption of marijuana and growing the plant for personal use. Because marijuana is totally worse for you than heroin. That's a fact.

Health insurance pays for the bulk of the program, which costs $22 million a year. All residents in Switzerland (which has a population of 7.5 million) are required to have health insurance, with the government paying insurance premiums for those who cannot afford it. Which is helpful for junkies who not only can't afford smack, but also fall short of the money to pay for health coverage that creates a program to get them drugs.

Meanwhile, 52% of voters approved an initiative to eliminate the statute of limitations on prosecuting pornographic crimes against children before the age of puberty. So to recap the Swiss opinion by law, child porn and marijuana - bad, heroin - good.