The policy after the elections

Parliament has been reappointed and another four-year legislature has begun. There are drug policy decisions to be made, but unfortunately there is very little hope that anything good will come out of it. An overview of the state of politics.

In the big picture, not much has changed in this year's elections: The losses of the one civic party are the gains of the other, and Red-Green has also swapped a few seats. The parliament will continue to be clearly bourgeois and FDP and CVP are still not on the legalization course in the THC issue. A majority for the legalization of THC is thus still not in sight.

Smartvote.ch asked all candidates about various political topics in the run-up to the elections. There was also a question on the topic of cannabis: “Should the possession and consumption of cannabis be legalized?” 187 of the now elected National Councilors answered the question and we ordered the data from Smartvote.ch and analyzed it. 60 elected answered the question with “Yes”, another 18 with “Rather Yes”. “Rather No” said 15 elected, another 94 (!) “No”. (13 did not answer the question.) Thus the ratio between the favoring and the opposing camp is about 40:60. So a clear majority does not want to know anything about legalization - not even if it is only about consumption and possession! In the National Council, only the Green Liberals, the representative of the Party of Labor and the one Christian Social are united in favor of legalization. The majority of the Greens and the Social Democrats are in favor. The Free Democrats are divided. The majority of the CVP members are against it, and the SVP even knows only one dissenter from the No-parole. The “Liberals”, the Lega, the EVP and the EDU are united against a legalization of THC consumption. (By the way: Members are welcome to order the detailed list with all those elected and their answers free of charge). Even if the Council of States were to draft a mini-variant as a counter-proposal to the (chance-less) hemp initiative, one can hardly imagine how such a proposal could find a majority in the National Council.

The Committee for Social Security and Health of the National Council SGK-NR discussed the cannabis issue and other drug policy proposals on November 8/9. Instead of making decisions, the commission postponed these topics: further discussions will only take place after the vote on the hemp initiative. This means that there will be no second partial revision of NarcA in the foreseeable future, i.e. no legalization of THC consumption.

- Commission of the National Council launches commission initiative 02/05

- Commission of the Council of States gives green light 05/05

- National Council adopts commission initiative with amendments 12/06

- Commission of the Council of States approves the project 10/07

- Council of States discusses 18/12/07

- Differences NR/SR open

- Final vote open

(This makes the text of the law final).

- Referendum is likely

- Referendum open

- Entry into force open

- Initiative submitted 01/06

- Federal Council rejects initiative, no counterproposal 12/06

- Commission of the National Council rejects initiative; no counter-proposal (to be prepared 02/07)

- National Council discusses 12/4/5/07

- Commission of the Council of States discusses, possible counter-proposal? open

- Council of States discussed open

- Final vote open

- Referendum on initiative (and possible counter-proposal?) open

- Initiative rejected, but with what proportion of votes?