BOLD INITIATIVES NEEDED TO TACKLE JUNKIE SHAME

Richard Ackland Hankers For A Raffish Kings Cross Long Since Lost Under A
Sea Of Heroin.

Last Friday evening as the steam rose off the footpaths and it tried in
vain to rain, there would have been between 50 and 60 citizens in the
Piazza Diabolo, aka Springfield Mall in Kings Cross, buying heroin.

There was a line of people clutching their money streaming in and out of a
certain establishment which has been well known for yonks as a heroin
distribution point in the Cross.

They were three deep over near the supermarket, haggling and trading. There
were clusters of eight to 10 in the piazza doing deals.

Of course, there was not a copper in sight.

On another occasion when a local businessman rang the police and said he
could count 50 people doing heroin deals within cooee of his front door,
the walloper who answered the phone just laughed and said he didn't believe
him.

Any louche, romantic, bohemian charm that the Cross may have had has long
gone - washed away by an ocean of heroin.

Day in and day out the same tragic, slumped, semi-comatose figures litter
the landscape. Continually new customers flood in to join them. The place
reeks of vomit and urine. Every so often an innocent is stabbed or slashed.

When a deal goes wrong, murderous screams and bloody bashings rent the air.

The supplying of heroin is utterly blatant. It's going on 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. They may as well be plying their wares through loud hailers.

The police seem to do brisk sweeps along the footpaths armed with their
little notebooks, or drive a vehicle into the piazza and sit in it looking
gormless for 15 minutes, then motor off to get their dinner. The moment
they're gone, it's business as usual.

Commissioner Ryan issues sleek orders about policing policy, yet it's all a
matter of supreme indifference to the street merchants.

Area commanders come and go, each earnestly committed to law enforcement.

There are small bursts of activity. A few suppliers are cleared off the
streets. Then they filter back. Some of the middle management in the supply
chain are targeted, but regardless the street trade keeps thriving.

Statistics are spouted about increased arrest rates and frequency of
patrols. None of which makes one iota of difference to what is actually
happening.

Naturally, clean, middle-class types like Heraldcolumnists are affronted by
this sea of misery. Yet are we not caring sensitive souls who appreciate
that this has to be treated as a public health problem, rather than a
matter of lock 'em up and chuck away the key?

Well, yes and no. The longer I'm here in the heart of it, the more I find
myself thinking the State of NSW should take over the heroin market, supply
the stuff to registered addicts at tuppence a ton, but preferably at some
specially created enclosure located in the Sturt Stony Desert.

Then the rest of us would not be confronted by this appalling misery, which
is a daily reminder of the failure of our will.

The problem is utterly intractable. The people supplying on the streets are
themselves addicts. As far as I'm aware the supply of heroin is still
illegal, but to punish the addicted supplier seems pathetic. To get the
higher-ups in the trade and so turn off the tap flooding the streets is
apparently beyond the wit, resources or capacity of current policing methods.

One hundred and fifty metres down the street from the city's biggest and
most public open-air heroin dealing room is the proposed State-sanctioned
heroin injecting room.

This handy juxtaposition of facilities is bound to have unhappy
consequences. If the level of activity in the raw market outside its doors
is any indication, this room will be run off its feet. It has been designed
to cope with six injectors at a sitting.

That number will not be sufficient to fulfil its primary purpose, which is
to remove from public gaze the distressing sight of people sticking needles
into their veins in unhealthy conditions.

The heroin that they are permitted to bring into the room may still be
spiked and lethal. A medium-size multistorey office block would actually be
required to meet the demand.

All of which presupposes the room will go ahead. The local business group
has mounted a case to stop it. It will be in court on March 21 for a full
hearing on whether all the rules and regulations in relation to for the
injecting room have been met.

There is evidence that suggests they have not.

Whatever the outcome of the court case, there is really no prospect of
returning the Cross to its former raffish pre-heroin glory, when
better-quality gangsters ran the joint.