DOOR LEADS AWAY FROM DEATH IN GUTTER

TWENTY drug addicts who would probably have overdosed in a King's Cross
gutter are alive after being revived at Australia's first legally
sanctioned injecting room.

The 20 success stories have become statistics of a new kind - figures used
to show why the contentious drug injecting centre has a place in the battle
plan against the scourge of drugs. After 12 weeks of operation, it has more
than 800 users registered, up to 100 people a day using its facilities and
about 200 addicts who have signed on for health and welfare programs,
including rehabilitation.

And then there is the one statistic that counts above all else - no deaths.

Centre director Ingrid van Beek said the figures were better than expected,
given the intense scrutiny under which it opened.

"I expected there would be greater reluctance among the drug using
population to use the facility and the fact that didn't happen shows just
how much users in the King's Cross area want a facility like this," she said.

The centre, a former pinball parlour, is in a colourful section of King's
Cross surrounded by strip clubs, prostitutes and drug addicts.

Sitting among the garish street fronts of its neighbours, with their
promises of girls, erotic dances and sex, the room, with an unadorned
opaque window and featureless door, staked out by a security guard, is open
for business between noon and 4pm and between 6pm and 9.30pm.

Users register at the counter before flicking through magazines in what
looks like the waiting room of a doctor's surgery. They are called through
to the injecting booths - designed for two users per table to encourage
safer injecting - and given clean needles and plastic spoons.

After shooting up, they go through to the recovery room, have a cup of tea
and a biscuit while waiting for the drugs to take effect and leave by the
back door.

The 18-month trial has strong community, State Government and police
support. Misuse of drug legislation was changed to ensure that workers at
the centre cannot be charged with aiding and abetting as long as they abide
by strict rules.

Much of the controversy surrounding the injecting room centred on its
location. King's Cross Chamber of Commerce mounted a campaign against it
opening in the middle of Darlinghurst Road.

It argued that drug dealers would be drawn to the area like moths to the
flame, bringing down the tone of the area and destroying the business of
legitimate shopkeepers.

But research was on the side of the centre's operators, the Uniting Church,
which argued the busy strip was a prime location.

Of the 677 ambulance callouts to the King's Cross area in 1999 in which
anti-heroin drug Narcan was used, more than 90 per cent - or 621 - were
within 300m of the current site at 66 Darlinghurst Road.

In May 2000, an independent poll of 300 people who lived and worked in
King's Cross said 71 per cent agreed with the decision to open an injecting
centre at King's Cross.

The centre was established to see if such a facility could cut the mounting
toll among drug users dying from overdoses and lower their risk of
contracting blood-borne diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C. Social
benefits are also expected to flow from giving addicts a private place to
shoot up and recover.

Centre spokesman Pat Kennedy said the priority was to provide a safe
injecting place so that lives could be saved. After that came efforts to
fix other problems.