`Needle Park' To Be Closed

ZURICH, Switzerland - Early on a weekday morning, several hundred drug users already are making a four-point circuit through the center of Platzspitz park, which in the past few years has become the drug rendezvous of Europe.

First stop is a hut run by public-health workers where used needles are exchanged for new. An estimated 12,000 are handed out daily.

Syringes in hand, the users move to an area under the gazebo where the dealers in heroin, cocaine and procaine can be found.

Purchases made, their third stop is a stone wall alongside the river where, arm bared and veins bulging, they give themselves a fix.

Then they stagger back toward the center, where many sleep under the trees or just wait for the next time.

To see someone shooting up in broad daylight is shocking. There is an overwhelming feeling of disbelief. Can this really be happening in clean, wealthy Switzerland?

"Amsterdam used to be the drug supermarket of Europe," says Josef Gatzi of the Zurich police drug squad. "The past couple of years it's been Zurich."

Wealth is part of the problem, Gatzi says. Switzerland has the highest per capita income in the world. "People have money to spend."

He and his colleagues on the drug squad have not been happy about what is happening in the park and are cheered by the city's recent announcement that Platzspitz will be cleaned out next summer.

He blames the generous aid provided by the city's public-health workers for drawing in users and dealers from all over Europe and beyond.

The city provides free needles in an attempt to halt the spread of AIDS. It also provides free food, housing and health care for Platzspitz regulars in need.

City spokesman Uorg Egenschweler estimates that Zurich spends about $13 million on drug users. That and the bad publicity Zurich was receiving because of its "Needle Park" persuaded the city fathers to close it.

Figures provided by the Zurich police show that of 2,063 drug users and dealers arrested last year, just over 24 percent were from the city of Zurich, and a further 20 percent were from the canton of Zurich. Only 12.5 percent were foreigners.

Gatzi says the police make arrests, but the penalty for heroin use in Switzerland is only a fine. Drug dealing carries a higher penalty, so the police target the major dealers.

Egenschweler points out that there is not enough room in Zurich's jails to hold all the people who potentially could be arrested.

Between now and next summer, the city will have to work out its plan for dealing with the people of Platzspitz and appeal to the other Swiss cantons to do their share.

The free-needle program will continue, but in a decentralized form. No one wants to create another area of town for junkies to gather en masse.

City officials will have to work out how they will send home the drug users and dealers from elsewhere. And existing drug-rehabilitation clinics will have to be expanded.

Gatzi's advice to other cities trying to cope with their drug problems: "Don't do the same as Zurich. It was a mistake."