DROPPED ADVISER CLAIMS PM BIAS

David Crosbie was travelling across town in a taxi, having a conversation
with the driver that enraged him.

"I'd told him I worked in the area of drug rehabilitation (Crosbie is the
executive director of Odyssey House) and he was saying, if a drug user
collapsed in his cab, he'd roll him into the gutter and leave him there to die.

"I said to him, really? What if the same person ran a red light, and was
left unconscious? And he said, that's different, that's an accident, so
he'd call an ambulance.

"Of course, running a red light is illegal, and probably more dangerous to
other people than taking heroin. I said to him: you'd let the drug addict
die, and try to save the red light runner? And he agreed with that."

Mr Crosbie, who was this week appointed to the influential Australian
National Council on Drugs, which advises the Prime Minister, John Howard,
on drug policy, runs into attitudes like this all the time.

"The frustrating thing is, if a bacteria in the water, or Legionella, was
killing hundreds of Australia's young people every year, we would be doing
everything and anything we could to save their lives," he said.

"Instead, every day, people are deciding to get off heroin, and the best we
can offer them is waiting lists and prejudice. But heroin addiction isn't
like a hip replacement. People die waiting to get into services, and they
die because we won't try other ways to solve the problem."

The Australian National Council on Drugs was established by the Prime
Minister in 1998. Its chairman, Brian Watters, was for 25 years a Salvation
Army officer. He is opposed to heroin trials and injecting rooms, and once
said he did not understand why young people did not seek "natural highs,
like hang-gliding" instead of taking drugs.

Although Major Watters and the Prime Minister share similar views on drug
policy, the council is required to be independent, and its 16 members
should have different views on how the drug problem should be handled.

Last week, Mr Howard replaced five of the existing members whose three-year
terms had expired, among them the founder of Family Drug Support, Tony
Trimingham, a passionate supporter of heroin trials and injecting rooms,
prompting claims that he was trying to stack the council with supporters of
"zero-tolerance" drug policy.

Mr Trimingham's son, Damien, died of a heroin overdose, aged 23, in the
stairwell of a disused, abandoned public hospital, in February, 1997.

"That's my tragedy, but the greater tragedy is, since he died, we've lost
another 2000 or 3000 people," Mr Trimingham said. After his son's death, he
formed Family Drug Support, which advocates "harm reduction" strategies,
such as injecting rooms.

"What I've discovered is that heroin doesn't get fixed in a few months. I
support treatment, rehabilitation, detoxification, all that, but we have to
keep people alive, until they are ready to become drug free. That can take
10 or 15 years and, in the meantime, people can die," Mr Trimingham said.
He was appointed to the National Council on Drugs in 1998, and wanted to
continue for a second, three-year term, largely so the views of parents of
drug users would be heard.

"I was told by Brian Watters that he had lobbied heavily for me," Mr
Trimingham said.

"I fully expected to be re-appointed. There are people who have done less
work than me, who are still there but then I read in the paper that I was
gone."

By coincidence, he was on the same aeroplane as Major Watters on the day
the new appointments were announced.

"He claimed to be completely ignorant, made several calls, and was
generally very distressed and shocked about it, but praised my work, then
said he had to ring the other members," Mr Trimingham said.

Mr Trimingham believes he was replaced because "I support heroin trials and
injecting rooms and that was never going to work, with this government."

Major Watters denied this, saying he had known that Mr Trimingham would not
be reappointed, "but not officially. I'd seen a list that he wasn't on, but
I didn't know it was final."

"It was a hurtful way for him to find out, to read it in the papers, but
it's not sinister. Basically, we wanted to get more people from around
Australia, because we had too many Sydney people."

"We also wanted new blood, new ideas. Tony was a strong advocate of
injecting rooms, and he is moving off the council. But David Crosbie is
equally a supporter of those things, and he is joining."

Mr Crosbie agreed that he would be surprised to see himself described as
supporting "zero tolerance". "Of the 80 people living at Odyssey House, 12
are children, so we're tough on drugs. If somebody finds a syringe, the
whole place stops," Mr Crosbie said.

"But the way I understand it, zero-tolerance means, if somebody is using
drugs, take them to jail. Nobody agrees with that, not even Mr Howard."

Mr Crosbie will be joined on the council by fellow new member, Tonie
Miller, who works with Tasmania's "Tough Love" group for parents of drug users.

As an example of the work her group does, Ms Miller offered this: "Say a
large, teenage son, full of hormones, maybe with a skinful of something
else, is kicking walls. Say the mum comes to us and says: what can I do? I
get so upset, I just burst into tears. "We brainstorm for mum. She would
sit quietly while a group of us came up with ideas for her to try for one
week. Now, one idea we use is plastic whistles. So when the son kicks the
wall, the mum might take the plastic whistle out of her pocket and blow it,
loudly."

Ms Miller said it was "rubbish" that she had been appointed to the National
Council on Drugs because she was an advocate of "zero-tolerance".

"I'm a pharmacist. I dispense methadone to people every day of my life. I
know you can't wave magic wands and stop people doing these things," she said.

Another new member, Garth Popple, works for the "We Help Ourselves" clinic
in Sydney's Redfern where drug users go "cold turkey", withdrawing from
heroin without methadone, naltrexone, or even Panadol to relieve the pain.

He rejects the "zero-tolerance" label, saying: "We have needles, syringes
in all our bathrooms." The clinic does collect urine samples from
residents, "but we don't throw them out if they test positive. "What I
really believe is, if there was endless money, we could do a bit of
everything. I think of it this way: if I knock on your door and ask for
$500 to help drug addicts, what would you want it spent on? If you had
young children, you'd probably say, education, so they never take up drugs.
If you had a son that died of a heroin overdose, you might say, an
injecting room. If you have a child with a heroin problem, you might say,
treatment. Everybody has their own view, so we need to stop fighting
amongst ourselves and split the money up in a way that makes people happy."

A second Victorian member, Margaret Hamilton, will continue on the council
for a second, three-year term. She does not believe Mr Trimingham was
removed from the council because of his views "because they are pretty much
the same as mine, so if he's gone, I should be gone".

New member Anne Bressington is the founder of Shay Louise House, named
after her daughter, who choked on her tongue while under the influence of
heroin.

Ms Bressington said she was not a "zero-tolerance" person. "I support
needle exchange and methadone. I'm not sure about shooting galleries ...
Drug users do need care and support, but you've got to draw a line at what
is support, and what is enabling."

Another new member, Julie Hanbury, is a volunteer counsellor for the Parent
Drug Information Service in Western Australia. A mother of three, "we've
experienced drug issues in the family. A couple of years ago, one of my
children lost a close friend, 16 years old, to heroin, and the shock, the
desperation, prompted me to get involved."

The head of Sydney's Ted Noffs Foundation, Wesley Noffs, said he would have
been pleased to serve another three years on the council.

"I'd like to think the decision not to include people like me and Tony is
not a move against us; it's new blood, and people who can give it more
time," Mr Noffs said. "And politically, it's actually a bad move for the
Howard Government to get rid of Tony, because it'll free him up to be as
vocal as he likes."