The Global Commission on Drug Policy has issued recommendations on tackling North America's opioid crisis, calling for the immediate expansion of harm reduction services, the decriminalization and regulation of currently illicit drugs and an initiative to allow interested cities to de facto decriminalize as federal debates over drug policy continue.

The position paper, to be released on Monday, comes in advance of the final report of the White House opioid commission, led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, due out in November.

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Seized cannabis and marijuana is seen during a press conference in Zurich, Switzerland.

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Swiss police said they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software.

Police said the find was part of a bigger investigation that led to the arrest of 16 people and seizure of 1.1 metric tons of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss francs ($1.1 million).

Officers discovered the hemp field in the northeastern canton (state) of Thurgau last year while investigating an alleged drug ring, said the head of Zurich police's specialist narcotics unit Norbert Klossner.

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In the circles where LSD eventually thrived, the moment of its discovery was more cherished than even the famous intersection of a fine English apple with Isaac Newton's inquiring mind, the comic cosmic instant that gave us gravity. According to legend, Dr. Albert Hofmann, a research chemist at the Sandoz pharmaceutical company, fell from his bicycle in April 1943 on his way home through the streets of Basel, Switzerland, after accidently dosing himself with LSD at the laboratory. The story presented another example of enlightenment as trickster. As a narrative it was very fondly regarded because so many of us imagined a clueless botanist pedaling over the cobblestones with the clockwork Helvetian order dissolving under him.

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GENEVA -- A pioneering program to give addicts government-authorized heroin has been overwhelmingly approved by Swiss voters.

At the same time, they rejected the decriminalization of marijuana in yesterday's referendum.

Sixty-eight per cent of voters approved making the heroin program permanent.

It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and lives of addicts since it began 14 years ago. Only 36.8% of voters favoured the marijuana initiative.

Parliament approved the heroin measure in a revision of Switzerland's narcotics law this past March. But conservatives challenged the decision and forced a national referendum under Switzerland's system of direct democracy.

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Voters Endorse Drugs-For-Addicts Measure While Rejecting Bid To Decriminalize Marijuana

GENEVA-The world's most comprehensive legalized heroin program became permanent yesterday with overwhelming approval from Swiss voters who also rejected the decriminalization of marijuana.

The heroin program, started in 1994, is offered in 23 centres across Switzerland. It has helped eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s. The plan is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

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A pioneering Swiss programme to give addicts government authorised heroin was overwhelmingly approved yesterday by voters who simultaneously rejected the decriminalisation of marijuana.

Sixty-eight per cent of voters approved making the heroin programme permanent. It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts since it began 14 years ago.

Only 36.8% of voters favoured the marijuana initiative.

Olivier Borer, 35, a musician from the northern town of Solothurn, said he welcomed the outcome. "I think it's very important to help these people, but not to facilitate the using of drugs. You can just see in the Netherlands how it's going. People just go there to smoke," Borer said.

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The Swiss have voted for the government's drugs policy, including the prescription of heroin to addicts, but have rejected a plan to decriminalise cannabis.

In a major upset on Sunday, a proposal to tighten legal provisions against paedophile criminals was carried. An early retirement scheme and plans to curb the powers of environmental organisations failed to pass at the ballot box.

Sixty-eight per cent of voters approved a plan to enshrine the government's four-pillar drugs policy in law, according to near-final results.

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A pioneering Swiss programme aimed to curb drug abuse by providing addicts with a clean, safe place to take heroin is expected to be made permanent by voters in a referendum on Sunday.

The programme has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse.

But governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering their own systems modeled on the Swiss one, which is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

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GENEVA (AP) -- Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.

Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering their own programs modeled on the system, which is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

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Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who invented the LSD and became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown acid trip, has died. He was 102.

He was working as a chemist in Basel, when he synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide. On April 19, 1943, he took the substance before cycling home.

That day has become known among aficionados as "Bicycle Day" as it was while he was riding home that he experienced the most intense symptoms brought on by the drug.

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His Accidental Experience of 'An Extremely Stimulated Imagination' Caused by the Drug Led to a Lifetime of Experiments and Initiated the Psychedelic Generation.

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD and thereby gave the psychedelic generation the pharmaceutical vehicle to turn on, tune in and drop out, has died. He was 102.

Hofmann died Tuesday morning at his home in Basel, Switzerland, of a heart attack, according to Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies.

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Swiss Chemist Who Discovered the Psychedelic Compound LSD and Remained Convinced of Its Great Therapeutic Potential

On April 16, 1943, while conducting research at the laboratories of the pharmaceutical company Sandoz in Basle, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann accidentally ingested some of the substance on which he was working and became the first person to experience an LSD trip.

The discovery would earn Hofmann the sobriquet of "father of LSD", and he was a lifelong advocate of the beneficial possibilities of what he called his "problem child".

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PARIS -- Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

The cause was a heart attack, said Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a California-based group that in 2005 republished Dr. Hofmann's 1979 book "LSD: My Problem Child."

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

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Albert Hofmann, 102, a Swiss chemist and accidental father of LSD who came to view the much-vilified and abused hallucinogen he discovered in 1938 as his "problem child," died April 29 at his home in Burg, a village near Basel, Switzerland, after a heart attack.

His death was confirmed by Rick Doblin, the Boston-based founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company developing LSD and other psychedelics for prescription medicines.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, thousands of times stronger than mescaline, can give its user an experience often described as psychedelic -- a kaleidoscopic twirling of the mind pulsating with color and movement.

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Youths Found To Have Better Relations With Peers And Good Grades

(Reuters) - A study of more than 5,000 youngsters in Switzerland has found those who smoked marijuana do as well or better in some areas as those who don't, researchers said yesterday.

But the same was not true for those who used both tobacco and marijuana, who tended to be heavier users of the drug, said the report from J.C. Suris and colleagues at the University of Lausanne.

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Swiss teenagers who sometimes smoke marijuana don't appear to have higher rates of "psychosocial problems" than those who abstain, according to a study published today in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

"Those who use cannabis sometimes do better than we think," J.C. Suris, the study's author, said in an interview. Light users of marijuana "don't have great additional problems. They are kids who function well."

There's no question that heavy use of marijuana does hurt, said Suris, who, along with colleagues at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, conducted surveys of 5,263 Swiss students in 2002.

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LAUSANNE, Switzerland - The World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) has defended the continued inclusion of cannabis on its prohibited list of substances following criticism that the ban is placing unnecessary strain on sporting federations.

IAAF council member and Spanish athletics federation president Jose Maria Odriozola raised concern about the cannabis ban on Sunday during a round table discussion on "borderline issues" at an international anti-doping symposium organised by the world athletics governing body.

According to Odriozola, federations are "wasting considerable time and money, dealing with what is essentially a recreational non-performance-enhancing drug."

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Switzerland's liberal policy of offering heroin addicts substitute drugs appears to be paying off, according to new research.

The number of new heroin users in Zurich has declined by 82 per cent since the policy of prescribing addicts with other opiates was introduced.

In Switzerland it is common for addicts to be given substitution treatment with two other opiates, methadone or buprenorphine.

They are also provided with rooms - known as "shooting galleries" - where they can inject prescribed liquid heroin, and have easy access to needle exchanges.

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Free Drugs, Needles Alter Thinking Of Youth

ZURICH -- A state's heroin policy, which includes providing alternative narcotics and needle-exchange programs, has led to fewer users as young people start to consider the substance a "loser drug," says a study outlined in the British medical journal Lancet.

The number of new heroin users in the Swiss state of Zurich rose more than 10 times from 1975 to 1990 before falling 82 per cent by 2002, researchers at the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zurich said in the study. The government introduced its new, more liberal, policy in 1991.

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BASEL, Switzerland -- When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool -- LSD-25.

"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD.

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