DROUGHT OR DELUGE: HEROIN TAKES ITS TRAGIC TOLL

Last week, a 20-year-old man from the northern suburbs had his leg amputated.

The man's leg became infected with gangrene after he injected commonly
available sleeping pills into his groin in a bid to get himself through
Melbourne's four-month heroin drought.

"Since heroin began drying up, people have been injecting all sorts of
things that have horrendous side-effects in a bid to get them through,"
says Richard Tregear, a western suburbs outreach worker with Open Family.

Since the drought began in November, community health workers have reported
a huge increase in the number of collapsed veins as heroin users have
switched to "whacking" sleeping pills such as diazepam amd temazepan.

"They inject in the groin, in the ankles, it just causes tremendous
swelling. The needles they use to inject pills such as temazepan and valium
look like ones you would use on elephants," says Mr Tregear.

The drought has not only caused a significant jump in home burglaries and
armed robberies at service stations. Outreach workers have also reported
street sex workers in suburbs as diverse as Northcote, Footscray, the CBD
and North Melbourne.

"Whenever you get a desperate community of drug users, you see an increase
in all sorts of illegal activity," says Northcote community worker Cheryl
Delalande.

Victoria Police found the purity of heroin seized last month had dipped to
as low as 7per cent. Last year, when heroin deaths tracked the road toll
and reached 80 by the end of March, puritysat at around 80 per cent. The
drought has placed a huge strain on drug support services. In February, the
Department of Human Services saw a 13 per cent increase in the number of
people in methadone programs, taking the total number of Victorians on
methadone to nearly 8000.

Odyssey House has also recorded a sharp rise in the number of people using
the meta-amphetamine known as ice.

"The concern there is that it gives people psychiatric episodes. Whereas
once ice was very expensive, now it is probably cheaper than heroin," says
Odyssey House's John Mercer.

The heroin drought has been caused by a number of factors. Severe droughts
and floods in traditional heroin-growing countries in South-East Asia and
in Afghanistan, as well as several large seizures by local and overseas law
enforcement authorities, has seen the drug all but disappear from some
parts of Melbourne.

"There's also a suspicion that some drug suppliers are withholding drugs to
push up the price," says Paul MacDonald, assistant director of drug policy
and services at the Department of Human Services. "But there's money to be
made, and there are a number of signs that the drought is about to break."

Already, the price for 1.7 grams of heroin has fallen from a high of about
$1200 in February to about $800, and needle exchange services are reporting
an increase in demand.

Ten days ago Mr MacDonald wrote to health and community workers across the
state warning them that the number of overdoses may increase as the heroin
shortage eased.

"We need to warn users that heroin might be about to increase in purity,
and that their tolerance levels may have gone down," Mr MacDonald says.

This week the health department went on the offensive to avert a feared
spate in heroin overdoses as reports have began to circulate that the drug
has returned to traditional hot spots like Collingwood, Footscray and
Springvale.

The department has warned users to test heroin by using smaller dosages,
and avoid injecting alone. The department has also launched an advertising
campaign warning users about the impending flood of high-purity heroin.

"In February, our foot patrols were receiving about half the usual calls
for help," says Mark Young, the manager of support services with Youth
Projects Inc, an outreach organisation active in the northern suburbs. "We
expect to be back to normal levels by the middle of May."