HEROIN TRIALS GET BOOST

THE WA Law Society supports proposals to supply heroin to long-term addicts
in a medically supervised trial.

Debate over so-called heroin prescription trials was reignited this week by
an National Crime Authority report which argued the drugs scourge was so
serious that no possible solution should be discarded.

It said police could not realistically be expected to quell the illicit
drug trade because the profits were irresistible to organised criminals.

Law society president Ken Martin QC said yesterday that NCA chairman Gary
Crooke QC was so well qualified that his views - right or wrong - could not
easily be ignored.

"It comes from someone so senior and someone so hands-on that the proposal
warrants serious consideration," Mr Martin said.

Mr Martin was commenting as the chasm widened between those sympathetic to
the contentious treatment option and those, including Prime Minister John
Howard, who believed it was not worth contemplating.

Mr Howard reiterated his opposition to heroin trials yesterday. He said
they represented total surrender to the drugs menace

"Whenever I'm Prime Minister we will not support a heroin trial and we will
not give any aid or comfort to any State or Territory that endeavours to
conduct a heroin trial," he said.

But Health Minister Bob Kucera said examining a heroin trial did not mean
the war on drugs was lost. "My view is let's keep an open mind on all of
these things and I don't think it is admitting defeat to consider a trial,"
he said.

He also disagreed with WA Police Commissioner Barry Matthews"comments
earlier this week that the battle against gangland Mr Bigs could not be won
because they were so easily replaced.

Mr Matthews was largely supported by the NCA report which concluded that
police alone could only intercept a small minority of drugs smuggled into
Australia. The NCA report said advances in telecommunications and computer
technology made it easier for organised criminals to elude detection.

Mr Kucera, a former police assistant commissioner, said it took six to
eight months for gaps left by captured crime bosses to be filled, which was
long enough to affect supply and save some lives.

Australian Medical Association Federal president Kerryn Phelps accused the
Federal Government of playing politics with addicts"lives.

Dr Phelps said prescription heroin could help addicts for whom other
treatment methods had been futile.

The ACT Government yesterday vowed to push ahead with a referendum at the
October 20 Territory election on a heroin trial and a safe injecting room.