DEATHS DOWN, SO IS DRUG WAR LOST?

In the first seven months of last year, 214 Victorians took so much heroin,
or such a bad batch of it, that it killed them. Up until yesterday, the
body count for this year was 29.

Why, then, does Australia's peak crime-fighting body profess to have lost
the war on drugs? Why does NSW police commissioner Peter Ryan feel the same
way? And why does Vic Health chief executive Rob Moodie believe the
Australian Federal Police are "delusional" if they think the battle to halt
the illicit drug trade is being won?

The answers are complex and, as Shaun Reynolds of the Australian Bureau of
Criminal Intelligence said yesterday, the figures can mean different things
to different people, depending on their philosophy.

Most experts say the bald figures on heroin-related deaths are not enough
and reject the whole concept of a "war" on narcotics, begun in 1973 by
Richard Nixon's administration in the United States. They emphasise the
importance of policing complemented by drug treatment and prevention.

The issue has been clouded further by the well-publicised heroin drought.
However, the number of syringes distributed by St Kilda Crisis Centre -
more than a million over the past year - suggests the heroin drought has
not led to a corresponding injecting drought.

"It doesn't take away the needy and desperate drug users who are continuing
to try and find a substitute for heroin or who are going through a lean
time with heroin," said Margaret Hamilton, director of Melbourne's Turning
Point Alcohol and Drug Centre.

John Dalziel, spokesman for the Salvation Army, which runs the St Kilda
centre, said there had been a 10 to 15 per cent increase in the number of
syringes handed out to addicts. Experts pointed to an increase in the use
of methamphetamines and benzodiazepines and more cases of alcohol abuse,
but these were less likely to cause overdose deaths.

To strengthen the argument for a heroin trial the NCA used estimates that
seizures accounted for only 12 per cent of all heroin consumed in
Australia. And while law enforcement, such as the AFP's log-runner
operation in Fiji, had some effect on heroin supply, Dr Moodie said the
Australian market was at the whim of global economic forces beyond its control.

For example, the Taliban's ban on growing poppies as a sin against the
teachings of Islam halted supply in Afghanistan, which produced 70 per cent
of the world's opium last year. The United Nations suggests Burma will
eventually regain its 1980s status as the main producer, but that will take
time.

Other factors are the weak Australian dollar, which could persuade
suppliers to sell their drugs more profitably elsewhere, and climatic
change destroying South-East Asian crops.

In Victoria, meanwhile, the number of overdoses attended by the
Metropolitan Ambulance Service has fallen, but not by as much as heroin
deaths. Dr Hamilton said this suggested the increased public awareness
might have led addicts to inject more cautiously, in the presence of other
people who were prepared to call an ambulance quickly. The most recent
figures show there were 139 overdoses in January compared with 379 in the
same month last year, and 365 in January, 1999.

According to the UN's 2001 report on global illicit drug trends, heroin
abuse remained generally stable in western Europe last year, but increased
in eastern Europe and some parts of Asia. "We have never won," Dr Moodie
said. But he hoped the recent strengthening of local drug strategies and
primary care for drug users would guard against spiralling harm when heroin
returned in force to the Australian market.

"It's wonderful that the deaths have come down, but I don't think it's
necessarily law enforcement that has done it ... Policing is important but
it can't be the only weapon," said Dr Moodie, who was part of the last Drug
Policy Expert Committee under Professor David Penington.

The NCA report, released on Wednesday, said heroin use had doubled in the
past 15 years and that the proceeds of trafficking had made organised crime
a national security threat.

Caroline Fitzwarrynne, executive officer of the Alcohol and Other Drugs
Council of Australia, said the criminality of illicit drug use made it
difficult to tell whether, regardless of the heroin drought, the war was
being won.