GovernmentZurich City Council prepares to deal with new drugs
SDA
5.2.2025 - 13:27
The city of Zurich had the open drug scene on the Lettenareal cleared in 1995. The picture shows a major raid in the summer of 1994 (archive photo)
Keystone
30 years after the open drug scene was cleared, Zurich City Council warns against new drugs. It also wants to counter these, such as fentanyl, with the four-pillar model. Above all, it is important not to focus solely on repression.
Keystone-SDA
05.02.2025, 13:27
SDA
Prevention, therapy, harm reduction and repression remain the pillars of Zurich's drug policy, as four city councillors emphasized to the media on Wednesday. Fentanyl, an opioid, is 50 times more potent than heroin, the dominant drug in the 1980s and 1990s.
The memories of the open drug scenes at Platzspitz and Letten still shape Zurich's drug policy today. This was evident in the summer of 2023, when aggressive crack users appeared in Bäckeranlage, a park near Langstrasse. The comparison with "Needle Park" was quickly drawn.
The city council does not yet see a major problem with fentanyl in Zurich, such as in the USA. However, it wants to be prepared for this at an early stage, as health chief Andreas Hauri (GLP) said.