The Swiss capital Bern is considering a pilot project to allow the sale of cocaine for recreational use – a radical approach to the fight against drugs that has not been tried anywhere else, Reuters reports.

Bern’s parliament supports the idea, which still has to overcome opposition from the city administration and will also require changes in national legislation.

Drug policies around the world are evolving: the US state of Oregon, for example, decriminalized the possession of small amounts of cocaine in 2021 in favor of drug addiction treatment. Many European countries, including Spain, Italy and Portugal, no longer have prison terms for possession of drugs, including cocaine, but nowhere has it gone as far as the proposal being discussed in Bern.

Switzerland is reviewing its stance on the drug after some politicians and experts criticized a blanket ban as ineffective, and the proposal, now in its infancy, is a continuation of efforts to allow the legal sale of cannabis.

“The war on drugs has failed and we need to look for new ideas,” said Bern councilor Eva Chen of the Alternative Left Party, which supported the proposal. – Control and legalization can do more than just repression,” she added.

In Switzerland, cocaine is only slightly more expensive than beer

Affluent Switzerland has one of the highest levels of cocaine use in Europe, according to levels of illicit drugs and their residues in wastewater, with Zurich, Basel and Geneva among the top 10 European cities.

According to the non-governmental organization Addiction Switzerland, Swiss cities, including Bern, have also seen an increase in cocaine use, and cocaine prices have halved over the past five years.

“Switzerland now has a lot of cocaine at the lowest prices and the best quality we’ve ever seen,” said Franck Zobel, deputy director of Addiction Switzerland.

“Today you can get a shot of cocaine for about 10 francs, which is not much more than the price of a beer,” he added.

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