HEROIN DROUGHT DILEMMA FOR DOCTORS

HEROIN users are turning to potentially lethal cocktails of cocaine,
amphetamines and tranquilisers to overcome an international "heroin
drought".And frontline Sydney hospitals and inner-city GPs are seeing an
upsurge in limb-threatening injuries as addled users hit major arteries
when injecting themselves with the fluid from oral benzodiazapine "gel caps".

Drug-related crime is also on the rise as desperate heroin users seek to
raise the $80 to $100 needed for a single hit of heroin, compared with $20
just 12 months ago.

The downside of the heroin drought was detailed by one of Australia's most
respected drug researchers, the head of the St Vincent's Drug and Alcohol
Services Unit Alex Wodak, at a meeting of drug groups in Canberra. The
groups, including the Australian Medical Association, the Alcohol and Other
Drugs Council and Action on Smoking on Health, called on the federal
Government to spend an extra $180 million of its $7 billion alcohol and
drug tax take on treatment and rehabilitation.

Dr Wodak said yesterday that while the drop in heroin deaths was
encouraging, users were moving on to whatever they could get and some were
doing themselves horrific needlestick injuries.

Treatment programs were stretched beyond their limits.

"(Users are) moving on to cocaine, amphetamines; they're moving on to
benzodiazapines (tranquilisers); they're moving on to whatever they can get
. . . and they're also moving on to a lot of prescription drugs," Dr Wodak
said.

"It's extraordinary that this heroin drought . . . the nirvana that we've
been hoping for, when we finally achieve it, doesn't seem to be quite as
wonderful as many people thought."

There had been an upsurge in heroin users reporting to inner-city GPs and
hospitals with horrific injecting injuries.

"I saw a person yesterday who'd been injecting temazepam gel capsules into
his groin and had a shocking injury because he'd hit an artery. So we are
seeing those sorts of things as a result of the heroin drought," he said.
An inner-city Sydney GP, Andrew Byrne, told The Australianthat doctors were
under greater pressure to prescribe the tranquilisers: "It's hard to tell
who can't get their hit of heroin and who's genuine."

He said at least one Sydney hospital had seen so many cases that it was
admitting only the most serious. Injecting the gel cap fluid into major
arteries could result in serious infection, blood clotting and, in extreme
cases, amputation.

Australian Medical Association national president Kerryn Phelps said the
organisation was looking for a "very strong commitment" from the federal
Government on illicit drugs and that drug addiction should be treated as
primarily "a social and health problem".