Can't kick the quick fix

International | On heroin vote, Swiss show they're addicted to big brother | Mindy Belz

Like Zurich's time-worn streets and bridges, Project Crossline is orderly, clean, and well-appointed. The second-floor clinic is reached through the back of an oversized office building. A spacious waiting room has ample seating for patients. Two steel tables are dwarfed by large picture windows in the injection room. Hanging above the tables are tourniquets. Beside them are squeeze bottles filled with alcohol, boxes of bandages, and towels.

Those entering the injection room must first get clearance from an orderly at the counter. It's a simple identity check, matching up patients with the proper dose on a chart. The "patients," however, are drug addicts, and the medications they receive are pre-loaded syringes of pure heroin. Some come as often as three times a day and receive up to 900 milligrams of uncut heroin, a fix undreamt of outside in the dank shooting galleries of Platzspitz Park.