Case Tests Legality Of Swiss Marijuana
by Marcus Kabel

October 12, 1998 - Reuters

ZURICH, Oct 12 (Reuters) - In little shops springing up around Switzerland, you can buy all the marijuana you want. You just aren't supposed to smoke it.

Drugs made from the hemp plant are illegal in Switzerland, as in most countries, but a turn of phrase in Swiss lawbooks leaves open a loophole by prohibiting trade in marijuana only if it is sold specifically as a narcotic.

Enterprising hemp retailers are testing the limits of the law by selling marijuana as potpourri, or dried hemp packed in small cloth bags as an herbal room scent and labelled "not for consumption".

But after three years of rapid growth, dozens of hemp shops could be facing imminent closure as prosecutors in Zurich take one shop owner to court in a test case. "I don't accept responsibility for misuse of the product," says Bruno Hiltebrand, who is due in court on October 16 to face charges of selling marijuana as a narcotic.

Hiltebrand, a 39-year-old pixie-like figure with spiky hair dyed bright blond, sells 22 varieties of Swiss-grown hemp at between 20 and 100 Swiss francs ($15-75) per sachet with names like "Juicy Fruit", "Lemon Skunk" and "Organic Northern Light".

Hiltebrand echoes the standard defence that others in the new Swiss hemp trade have been using since a few growers and their friends came up with the idea in the mid-1990s.

The argument is simple. The potpourri sachets are legal, the shop owners say, because they are sold for aroma therapy and expressly marked as not for consumption as a drug.

What the buyer does at home with the contents is outside the vendor's control, they say.

"If the police catch a Porsche driver going over the speed limit, they don't punish the car salesman," Hiltebrand said. "If we get a customer who says they want something to smoke, we tell them firmly that we don't have anything to smoke, just aroma sachets."

PROSECUTORS REJECT VENDOR'S ARGUMENT This is a line that prosecutors in Zurich, Switzerland's biggest city, are no longer willing to accept.

"After carefully reviewing the legal situation, the district prosecutor's office believes the law is very clear," said Prosecutor Max Spoerri. Consumption of marijuana is illegal and so is its sale for consumption, he said. "I am convinced this case will be decisive regardless of which way the verdict goes," Spoerri said.

If the court finds Hiltebrand guilty of trafficking in commercial narcotics and the verdict is upheld on appeal, then prosecutors across Switzerland will file similar charges aimed at shutting down other hemp shops, Spoerri says. If the verdict is not guilty, then politicians will probably start work quickly on rewording the law to seal the loophole, according to the head of the Swiss Federal Health Agency.

"It is no secret that we have been watching the development of so many hemp shops in Switzerland with some concern," said the agency's director Thomas Zeltner. "Hemp as a narcotic is prohibited by Swiss law and the idea is that it should stay prohibited."

OTHER PRODUCTS From a handful two or three years ago, the number of hemp sachet shops has grown to around 160 and is growing by about 50 per year, according to experts. Besides the aroma sachets, most hemp shops sell a wide range of less controversial products from clothes made of hemp fibre to hemp seed-flavoured ice cream. The fact that these shops were selling marijuana from Swiss fields and greenhouses started making headlines in 1997. Zurich prosecutors opened their investigation after a critical story in the conservative Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper. "The cause was various complaints, for example from parents who were upset that their children were spending their entire pocket money in these shops," Spoerri said.

"Even the police in (neighbouring) southern Germany complained that people were coming back with marijuana from here and so did police in northern Italy." Spoerri is seeking a 14-month suspended sentence for Hiltebrand, a fine of 20,000 Swiss francs and a further 100,000 Swiss francs in alleged illegal profits. The figure of 100,000 francs is Spoerri's estimate of the net profit Hiltebrand's shop earned on hemp sachet sales of 195,000 francs from the start of the investigation in August 1997 to April, when charges were filed. Hiltebrand's shop "James Blunt" is typical of the genre, a small and crowded storefront in a side street behind the city's central train station. Its plate glass windows are painted with the names of ailments allegedly treatable by inhaling the aroma of bagged hemp -- everything from sleeplessness and irritability to impotence and hair loss.

"I have loved hemp for a long, long time," says Hiltebrand. "That's why I opened this business, because I saw that other people were doing it and not having any legal problems."

Spoerri says it was probably a mistake to let the hemp sachet business flourish for so long before intervening.

The Zurich local court is due to reach its verdict on or shortly after Friday's one-day hearing.

But a final decision could be delayed by months or even years through appeals all the way to the Swiss supreme court, leaving time for the active community of Swiss hemp farmers to find other ways to dispose of their harvest. "Experience teaches us that hemp growers have a very active imagination when it comes to finding new ways to market their product," said Zeltner. ($1=1.318 Swiss Franc)

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