In this interview with Owoseye Ayodamola and Lois Ugbede, the former President of Switzerland and current Chair, Global Commission on Drug Policy, Ruth Dierfuss, during her visit to Abuja, Nigeria, spoke on the Commission’s campaign on decriminalisation of drug users.
Ms Dierfuss spoke on her drug campaign mission to Nigeria, saying the country needs to imbibe new tactics to fight the drug war.
PT – You were the first woman to be the President of the Confederation of Switzerland. How did it feel attaining that level of success?
Dierfuss: When you are the first to do something as a woman, after many decades of discrimination against women, it creates a great obligation to open the door for the next ones and to be a role model for little girls that will think that they can also dream to be president of their country.
In my case it was especially thrilling because I was elected by the parliament into the government because of the scandalous reality that the government had. ‘No woman at all’ was no longer accepted by the people.
I was elected because the parliament saw that it was time for women to enter into government.
PT- During your time as the President, you were quite successful. You are accredited with reforms in social security, health insurance, the forefront drug strategy that changed the landscape of Switzerland in terms of demand reduction strategy, but your maternity insurance law could not see the light of the day, did that leave a sour taste in your mouth?
Dierfuss: Not at all, because it is a very long battle for the maternity leave, it took about 25 years and I could say the seed that I (planted) on the issue was fruitful because it was accepted shortly after I resigned from government.
The struggle of 25 years was successful. In politics the important thing is to make things move. If another one can succeed at the end, it is okay. An important thing to note in Swiss politics is that, I was president for one year. I was in government ten years. I was successful in the terms that during the ten years as a minister of health, social affairs, environment and higher education which was all in my ministry, I was successful because we decided, together in the government, of my proposal to go for them.
Just to say, a president in Switzerland is more of a protocol issue. We are rotating. During the year you are president, you are still minister of health and so on.
You can continue to work but in the meantime, you have the responsibility to make the government function. That is just a little information about the strange political system we have.
PT – What you are always remembered for is your drug policies in Switzerland, (Needles Park used to be notorious for drug uses which you changed and which has become a model for some other countries who are battling with such issues). What inspired that movement?
Dierfuss: When I was back in government, we had two negative revolution we needed to face. One was the peak in HIV/AIDs epidemic and the other was a strong increase in heroine consumption.
One was fueling the other, the despair of the people was fueling the drug consumption and the drug consumption was fueling the epidemic through needles that were contaminated and so on.
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We often see quite shocking, people lying around, people being partly organised, others came just to buy the stuff to consume and go back to their jobs. So all people in Needle Park were not miserable people.
But some of them were kept by the drug, they were dependent on it, they lived there, had petty criminality to find money to buy their drugs. Our priority was to bring these people into a more balanced live, offer them the services to protect themselves, protect the environment and to regain a better live.
At the beginning it was an initiative from NGOs, doctors, people from the faculty of medicine, and churches who said we have to reach out to the people instead of just abandoning them in the situation.
The government too accepted to develop the measures to have safe consumption of the drugs. A place where people could come and take the drug bought in black market, in a safe environment with medical and social professionals being there. We also provide syringes and other materials (for them) to take their drugs to prevent contacting and spreading HIV/AIDS.
The facility also does dope checking because when they buy most of these substances at the black market, there is a tendency that the substance has been adulterated and poisonous, for example, concrete mixed with heroine. You can imagine what concrete can do to the vein of the person injecting?
It is to solve all these mystery and problems in the society that we decided to change the drug policy.
The initiative came from people who were ready to go really inside the problem and to tell us we cannot continue with repression, abandoning the drug users but have to act.
I was happy enough to be able to convince the whole government to scale up in principle, everybody, and leave nobody behind in the intervention.
