AUSTRALIA WON'T HAVE HEROIN TRIAL, SAYS GOVERNMENT

Australia was unlikely to ever see a heroin trial, Health Minister Michael
Wooldridge said today.

Dr Wooldridge said new medical treatments were highly successful and law
enforcement was also reducing the flow of drugs.

"I don't think Australia will ever see a heroin trial," he told ABC radio.

"I think it would be enormously controversial and I cannot see the medical
benefits."

A report by the National Crime Authority (NCA) recommended a heroin trial as
a way of eliminating organised crime in the illegal drug trade.

But Dr Wooldridge said the NCA was out of date.

"I don't think there's any evidence that heroin would give any better
treatment," he said.

"I also know that as a doctor that things you do can make things worse as
well as make things better.

"You have to look at the supply side as well. There's no simple solution
here, or no magic bullet."

The Prime Minister, John Howard, reaffirmed his government's opposition to
free heroin for drug addicts, saying that as long as he remained prime
minister, heroin trials would not be held.

"Claims we are losing the fight are not borne out by the evidence," he told
Brisbane radio 4BC.

He said figures showed a sharp decline in heroin deaths while police
seizures of illegal drugs were higher.

Mr Howard said free heroin trials in Switzerland had not been supported by
the World Health Organisation.

"We would not give any aid or comfort to any state that considered
conducting free heroin trials," he said.

Dr Wooldridge said federal laws meant any heroin trial - such as the one to
be voted on in the ACT at a referendum later this year - could not get off
the ground.

"For a heroin trial to go ahead, it would need the commonwealth to change
legislation to allow the importation of heroin," he said.

"And we would not do that. So you wouldn't need to override it, it could not
go ahead."

Dr Wooldridge said he did not resile from his former comments about a trial.

"In 1997 I perhaps had the view that we should try anything. We have data
today that we didn't have in 1997. We now have access to treatment that we
didn't have in 1997," he said.

"I don't resile from what I said in 1997 and my colleagues took a different
view, and in the past four years I think things have moved on."