The World Can Learn from Switzerland's Drug Policy

In the late 1980s, Switzerland saw a significant increase in injection drug use, and the crime and public health harms that are associated with it under our prohibition system. A new video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union features a range of Swiss experts discussing the science-based policies that the country has adopted to deal with those issues, including Professor Ambros Uchtenhagen, head of the first heroin maintenance program in Switzerland; Felix Lengweiler, the chief of security police and policing of narcotics crime at the Zurich City Police; and Uwe Serduelt, deputy director, Centre of Research on Direct Democracy at the Zurich University.

The video's release coincides with a new report on the subject by the Open Society Institute, Read From the Mountaintops: What the World Can Learn from Drug Policy Change in Switzerland.