Heroin discovered at a border crossing near St Gallen in 2007. The drugs were hidden in a truck from Turkey. (Keystone)
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Chaplain Flury launches a campaign against hashish on pirate radio in 1971. (Keystone)
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Today it's mass produced but 20 years ago cocaine was the preserve of the rich. (Keystone/Martin Rütschi)
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February 13, 1995: one last hit of heroin. A day later Zurich's open drug scene near the River Limmat was declared a thing of the past. (Keystone/Walter Bieri)
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2003: A cow ventures into a cannabis plot in Martigny, canton Valais. (Keystone/Olivier Maire)
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Role model footballers Thomas Bickel (left) and Alain Sutter of the Zurich Grasshoppers help campaign against drugs in the 1990s. (Keystone)
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Big haul: in August 2000, Zurich police catch a smuggler with 31 kilograms of heroin. (Keystone/Steffen Schmidt)
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After the LSD of the 1960s came ectasy and other party pills. (Keystone/Edi Engeler)
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Swiss scientist and chemist Albert Hofmann created LSD while working for Sandoz in Basel. He died at the age of 102 in 2008. (Keystone/Reto Gisin)
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X-ray of a drug mule caught carrying packs of cocaine in his intestines in 2009. (Keystone/Grenzwachtkommando VI Genf)
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October 2011: a suspected dealer is searched in a railway underpass in Lausanne. (Keystone/Dominic Favre)
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Teenagers sneak away from a traditional wrestling match to have a crafty drink and a smoke. (Keystone/Monika Flückiger)
Thomas Kern
June 2004: Social Democrat parliamentarian Evi Allemann (left) sings in front of parliament with the band Tomazobi in support of legalising cannabis. (Keystone/Monika Flückiger)
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Private cannabis crop on a Zurich rooftop in 2005. (Keystone)
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August 1994. The drug scene around the disused Letten area in Zurich attracted hundreds of drug addicts every day. (Keystone/Martin Rütschi)
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Soft drugs also make money: in 2009 Zurich police seized SFr600,000 in cash, over a ton of cannabis and arrested 16 people. (Keystone/Kantonspolizei Zürich)
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It's not just young people who knock back the alcohol at the traditional Federal Wrestling and Alpine Games Festival. (Thomas Kern)
Thomas Kern
Each society, era and culture has its drugs.
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Thomas Kern was born in Switzerland in 1965. Trained as a photographer in Zürich, he started working as a photojournalist in 1989. He was a founder of the Swiss photographers agency Lookat Photos in 1990. Thomas Kern has won twice a World Press Award and has been awarded several Swiss national scholarships. His work has been widely exhibited and it is represented in various collections.
Hash, marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, opium, amphetamines, morphine, heroin, barbiturates, alcohol and tobacco. Switzerland is no stranger to such drugs and follows a so-called “four-pillar” drugs policy drawn up in the 1990s of prevention, therapy, risk reduction and repression.
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You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.