So..., what did I do? Of course..., I had to go take a gander at Needle Park! Armed only with my somewhat youthful ignorance… (To be continued when I have some more time.)
AVT
(March, 2012)
April 22nd, 2016 (Addendum):
Several years ago when I traveled to Zurich, Switzerland for
business and against warnings, I went to view Zurich’s Needle Park. For starters, the City of Zurich appeared
almost immaculately clean, by U.S. standards at the time. Moreover, the majority of the Swiss people in
the City of Zurich did not seem as very imposing figures either. As I had been living and working in the
greater Philadelphia area for several years at that point in time, I thought,
how bad can this Needle Park place really be?
So, I drove the little Opel rental car by the park and looked down into
it.
It was, like…, one of the scariest places I’ve ever
seen! Those folks/heroin-addicts in the
park appeared so strung-out and desperate that they would likely take the
eyeglasses off someone’s face if they could get any bit of money for those
stolen eyeglasses. To have large numbers
of them congregating there at the park during any given time of day struck me
as quite common-place for the park as well.
Needless to say, I didn’t get out of the car and the thought of seeing
that place again during my visit to Zurich never again crossed my mind – not once!
Now that Switzerland has a state-sponsored heroin program,
however, according to the news reports, people walk their dogs and jog where
Needle Park had previously existed. No
longer does any fear of crime prevent the mainstream and law-abiding populace
from enjoying the park.
I can’t help but to forever wonder: How much would such a
decrease in heroin/drug-related crime be worth to our society? No more dead cops. No more dead citizens or dead babies due to stray
bullets from drug-dealers fighting each other in the streets.
To our nation’s leaders, I say: Lead or get out of the way! Throw in the towel on the drug war, ‘cause I,
for one, am tired of paying for it!!! Where
have the nation’s decades-long drug policies left us? How much money and what other external
costs have been nearly wasted to those ends to date?
AVT
See:
SWISS
HEROIN-ASSISTED TREATMENT 1994- 2016: SUMMARY
(Believe it or not, there’s actually more to this story
which took place after I returned to Philadelphia. Maybe I'll write some more about it, before too
long.)
