Ah Switzerland. Who wouldn’t want to go there? With mountains, beautiful weather, Roger Federer, chocolate and neutrality galore, it is a delightful tourist destination for travelers all over the world in these tough economic times. These days, it can’t be wise for the Swiss to be electing to cut down their own tourism, but here we are.

Things become a little more complicated when the tourist dollar generating enterprise the nation is attempting to restrict is the coveted “suicide tourism.” Ironically enough, the perennially neutral country has been a bastion for those who wish to take their own life, and the Justice Minister has had enough.  With some controversy over the terminality (a word?) of the patients illnesses, Switzerland is cracking down on this so called “suicide tourism” and making it more difficult for terminally ill Europeans to end it all.

If you ask me, the Swiss missed the boat on this one, but perhaps some desperate former Soviet Republic will become desperate enough to use a left-over Soviet windfall that was not spent on Migs and AKs to build an assistaed suicide haven. I hear Bratislava is beautiful this time of year. The article on the crackdown can be found here.

This article was written in October & is part of the Archives , Politics & History , Will sections.