Zurich Journal; A Marketplace for Drugs, a Bazaar of the Bizarre
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: September 27, 1990
LEAD: In an oak-shaded park a few hundred yards from Zurich's stately banks and elegant shops, a man named Sylvio carefully worked a hypodermic needle into a vein in his neck, then slowly injected a mixture of heroin and cocaine.
In an oak-shaded park a few hundred yards from Zurich's stately banks and elegant shops, a man named Sylvio carefully worked a hypodermic needle into a vein in his neck, then slowly injected a mixture of heroin and cocaine.
All around him, staggering, wasted young people were openly injecting and smoking heroin and cocaine as police officers looked on.
Zurich's needle park is a place feverishly occupied 24 hours a day with the business of buying, selling and using drugs, a place with the bustle of the bazaar and the spirit and tattered splendor of a 1960's rock concert. Its icon is the needle, an object of constant fascination, endlessly being caressed, readied with drugs or pressed into veins.
The strange scene has been a fixture in Zurich for several years, tolerated by city officials who are convinced that drug use should be regarded as a sickness rather than a crime. Social and medical workers estimate that about 300 to 400 heavy drug users live in the park without shelter, toilets or showers, and that as many as 3,000 others pass through daily to buy and use drugs. A Plan to Clear the Park
But now, concerned that their city's image is being blighted, Zurich officials are taking steps to gradually clear the drug users out of the park.
The city government has proposed opening several buildings where addicts would be able to take drugs under medical supervision. The plan also calls for a package of free social and health services for heavy drug users, including housing.
''We don't want the whole world to think that Zurich is the place to buy drugs,'' said Robert Neukomm, the City Council member in charge of the police. ''On the other hand we have to provide an alternative for these people who are taking drugs.''
Zurich's drug policy has evolved over about a decade, beginning with strict police enforcement that drove the illicit market from one part of the city to another and moving to a plan of containment of the problem, out of sight, in a little park called the Platzspitz, a wedge of rose gardens, oaks and firs near the heart of the city, but cut off from neighbors by two converging rivers.
Neighborhoods that had been troubled by petty crime and the sight of blatant drug abuse benefited from the containment plan. But overall crime statistics stayed about the same. A recent survey found, for example, that about a third of the heavy drug users in the park made their money trafficking small amounts of drugs, another third survived by stealing and robbing and the others worked as prostitutes.
The midway of the grotesque carnival is a concrete path along the edge of the Limmat River, lined with makeshift counters covered with neatly arranged spoons, bottles of water and paper cups bristling with slender, disposable syringes.
The crowd thickens as night falls and drug hustlers work their way through the sea of bodies clogging the path, calling out ''Sugar, sugar, fine sugar!'' when they mean heroin, and ''Cokay, cokay!'' for cocaine.
The other night, three men crouched under a park lamppost, dividing a white powdery pancake of heroin with a Swiss Army knife. Next to them, a woman lay in the dirt in a stupor. Four or five men were intensely working needles into their arms. A woman in a striped sweater probed for veins in one hand, blood streaming down her fingers, as a woman in leather pants and stained blouse wobbled past, a bloody syringe dangling from her neck. Nightly Trips to the Park
Sylvio, a swarthy, slender man with horn-rimmed glasses, rose from a crouch and eased the bloody needle out of his neck. He worked as a technician in a factory 60 miles from Zurich, he said, and rode the train in nearly every night to finance his own habit by buying grams of heroin for $275 to $400, breaking them into smaller portions and taking back an extra $75 to $150.
Two years ago, Dr. Peter Grob of the University of Zurich, opened an AIDS prevention clinic in the park supported by the city and other organizations, which gives away about 7,000 free needles and hundreds of condoms daily. The clinic also provides emergency services for a half-dozen or so overdose victims each day and treatment for other medical problems. A handful of social workers try to strike up friendships and guide users into drug treatment programs and a group of Zurich volunteers dish out free lunches.
Dr. Grob estimated that 35 percent of the heavy drug users are infected with the AIDS virus.
Until mid-August, there had been only a few plainclothes policemen in the park. But then uniformed officers were sent in as a first step in the city's new approach in hopes that their presence would dampen the free-for-all atmosphere.
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