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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Cannabis nets Swiss traders £200 million
Sunday Telegraph (UK) Sunday 16 Apr 2000 SOURCE: Sunday Telegraph (UK) PUB DATE: 16th April 2000 CONCERN is growing in Switzerland that a legal loophole allows cannabis to be cultivated openly on farms and sold over the counter or via the internet as "hemp". Unlike most European countries, Switzerland allows cannabis to be grown legally while prohibiting its use as a drug. Cannabis, used for rope making and as a herbal tonic since ancient times, has enjoyed a revival among growers in recent years and is cultivated to produce textiles and cosmetics, to flavour food products and even to brew hemp beer. Dozens of hemp farms have sprung up in Switzerland in the past five years along with 150 hemp shops, where hemp products are sold together with marijuana. To cover themselves legally, the shops pack the dried weed in cellophane, and then barcode, price and label it as "hemp tea", "dried flowers", "organic buds" and "scent sachets". Some traders warn consumers: "Persons attempting to use the contents for purposes other than those for which they were intended are subject to the consequences of their own actions." Some web sites offering these products for sale declare "Not for export". But in reality they are glad to take orders and ship the goods abroad. Francois Reusser, the president of the Swiss Hemp Association, who runs Chanf, a popular Zurich hemp shop, said: "Customers who ask for marijuana are sent packing." Swiss police estimate that only five to 15 per cent of Swiss hemp production is used legally - the rest is smoked. Switzerland has become Europe's biggest hemp producer, with 200 tons expected this year. Mr Reusser said this year's turnover will be £200 million. Mr Reusser, who likens smoking marijuana to drinking wine or puffing a cigar, added: "Why must a mature adult have contact with the criminal milieu when they want to buy cannabis?" One hemp trader was convicted by a Swiss court two years ago for selling drugs. But another court acquitted a fellow trader in a similar case while calling for clarity in the law. A recent report by the Federal Commission for Narcotics Issues, an independent panel that advises the government, found that half a million people out of Switzerland's population of seven million smoked cannabis at least once a month. It concluded that cannabis had all but attained middle-class respectability "because of widespread use and a marked increase in its social status". The panel recommended legalising possession, sale and consumption of small amounts within a strict legal framework. Recent surveys of Switzerland's four ruling coalition parties found three were in favour of legalising cannabis under strict conditions. Only the Right-wing nationalist Swiss People's Party was opposed to the legalising of cannabis. The cannabis debate may yet surprise Switzerland's neighbours, who regard the law-and-order conscious Alpine state as a bastion of conservatism.
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