WAY CLEARED FOR FIRST LEGAL SHOOTING GALLERY

AUSTRALIA'S first legal heroin injecting room could open for business
in days after the Supreme Court rejected a legal claim against its
validity.

Supreme Court Justice Brian Sully yesterday dismissed the challenge
by Kings Cross Chamber of Commerce to the licence held by the Uniting
Church and its right to operate the injecting room at 66 Darlinghurst
Rd.

The injecting room -- the largest in the world -- will allow the
administration of 200 hits a day in two four-hour sessions during an
18-month trial.

"We'll have it opened as quickly as we can," the Reverend Harry
Herbert of the Uniting Church said after the decision. But chamber
president Malcolm Duncan warned that NSW had entered the arena of
human trials.

"Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the petri dish. You are now in
[Premier] Bob Carr's social experiment," he said.

Justice Sully said while the heroin trial raised "large questions of
public policy, of public morality, of social philosophy, of social
policy and of social welfare", those matters were not for the court
to judge.

He found Police Commissioner Peter Ryan and the Health Department
Director- General Mick Reid had "acted reasonably and within the
statutory criteria correctly construed" in approving the gallery.

The chamber had objected to the location of the injecting room -- in
a former amusement arcade -- because it said the centre would be
across the road from the train station and in front of one of the
busiest taxi ranks in Sydney.

Chamber members, including operators of sex shops and hotels on the
Darlinghurst Rd strip, supported the court action.

The Risque Adult Boutique, the Pleasure Chest, the Tudor Hotel,
Maksim Lodge, Playbirds, Kinks and Erotica Plus all opposed the
centre's opening.

The chamber also argued that the Uniting Church was not a properly
constituted organisation entitled to operate the controversial trial.

But in his judgment Justice Sully found there was "no current lawful
impediment" to the Uniting Church operating the centre and the
challenge was "unsound" in law.

Justice Sully also refused an application by the chamber for an
immediate seven-day stay.

Mr Duncan said the chamber would consider an appeal which must be
lodged within 28 days.

"The location is totally inappropriate," Mr Duncan said.

"Round one has now been decided. We move on."

Mr Herbert said it was "time to go ahead" with the trial and it was
in "nobody's interest" to try to stop the centre from opening.

"I hope that wise heads will prevail at the Chamber of Commerce," he
said. "It's only a trial. We won't know whether it is a good thing or
a bad thing unless we do it and we need to do it."

NSW Special Minister of State John Della Bosca welcomed the decision.

"The Government is committed to evaluating whether a medically
supervised injecting room can act as a gateway to treatment, keep
addicts alive and improve the general amenity of Kings Cross for
residents and business," Mr Della Bosca said.

But Opposition Leader Kerry Chikarovski said she was "disappointed"
that the views of the community on the location of the room had been
dismissed.

The safe injecting room trial has been Government policy since the
1999 NSW Drug Summit but has hit several hurdles including the forced
withdrawal of the original operators, the Sisters of Charity,
following intervention by the Vatican.

The injecting room's predecessor, an illegal shooting gallery at the
Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, shut down in May 1999 following the
State Government's decision to go ahead with the medically supervised
trial.

The so-called tolerance room, or T-Room, caused a national outcry
when it opened ahead of the drugs summit that approved the legal
injecting rooms trial.

Police raided the shooting gallery during its one week of operation.