No reason not to do this across the board
Switzerland is concervative in some part of the country. It’s not like the US but the country has a division based on countryside and cities, cities being more liberal.
What made a change in the policy is that Switzerland had at the end of the 80’s the first and the second most important open scene in Europe. People came from all the country and even further to use drugs mostly opioid. People were using next to the Federal palace, home of the Parlament.
They had to do something and decided to have a liberal, progressive policy to help people instead of criminalizing.
But, we have multiple parameters to take in account. The first, it was at the end of the 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s. The population composition was different at this time. If you were not swiss, the chance to be deported was high.
Another factor is cultural. In the swiss culture, powerty doesn’t exist. People are wealthy. The really is different so Switzerland literally hides the poor and powerty. It’s similar to put everything under the carpet so everything is nice from the outside. The fact to see in parks and the nearby streets drug users day and night wasn’t a good think. The liberal policy match’s the fact that powerty has to be hidden.
It’s not only to be good or to do something good. Switzerland did horrible thing for the same reason like deporting children of poor families or single parent.
If people have an interest on the topic, I share two albums on imgur to see how it looked like. Both are NSFW!
Open scene in Bern, it was the second most important in Europe.
The open scene in Zürich was the most important across Europe.
Thank you for this, it’s very interesting to hear more details about how this was handled over there. In the US we tend to either have a very idealistic view (liberals) or very negative view (conservative) of Euro and Nordic countries’ social policies. No country is perfect, but I guess if the outcome has worked well then we can’t fault it even if the reason was to maintain their image by hiding poverty.
No problems! People like to view the swiss policy with drugs as an example. Sure the implementation works, Bern was the first city with a protected space for drug use. It was a game changer and progressive for the time.
But, the reality is more mixed. The intentions were not so nice. People matter but the image of the country and the streets was another part. After the adoption of this policy, the city of Bern became a left city. Zürich has a similar path. It was not a leftist thing.
It workwd for the last 30 years. But, Switzerland has to be careful and work on it to keep the leadership it acquired.
