SRIINGVALE SEEKS SAFE HOUSE TO TAKE ADDICTS OFF STREET

They hardly bother to hide the heroin deals in Springvale any more and
George the shopkeeper is angry. "I hate them all. They have destroyed this
city," he says, grabbing a long wooden stick he keeps behind the counter
and slapping it in his fist. "I run out and chase them away. But it is no
good. They are always there."

A female customer sees heroin being bundled up in a fast-food outlet and
complains to her local member of Parliament.

Just along busy Springvale Road, buyers and sellers mingle outside a
supermarket. Some have young children who must wonder what's inside the
tiny balloons that are popped out of a dealer's mouth and given to mummy or
daddy. Inside is the white powder the addicts crave.

"You would have to be Blind Freddy not to notice the numerous deals that
are going down," says the local Labor MP, Mr Eddie Micallef. "Dealers are
openly and brazenly selling in broad daylight with little attempt to hide
it."

A month after a police drugs blitz cut the crime rate in Springvale by 60
per cent and forced dealers into other suburbs, the city's business and
community leaders say the situation is worse and are demanding Government
action. With addicts injecting in laneways, parks and filthy, unoccupied
buildings, Mr Micallef and Springvale community health workers have decided
to push strongly for the setting up of safe houses where drugs bought
illegally can be taken in sterile, medically supervised environments.

The controversial proposal, trialled in Switzerland in 1985, is designed to
reduce overdoses, cut the spread of AIDS and hepatitis from sharing
injecting equipment and reduce the nuisance of public drug use.

In Springvale, health and social workers say the risk to the community from
the drugs trade has become serious. Each morning, staff of the Springvale
Primary School check the grounds for used needles. The staff pick them off
the roof where users have thrown them during the night. Across the road
from the school, furtive, dishevelled users and sellers walk the footpath
and huddle in the malls.

A businessman who has had a shop in Springvale for eight years says he no
longer feels comfortable in the city. "You walk into (a supermarket) and a
12-year-old asks you if you want to score," he says. "There has been a big
change in Springvale over the last couple of years and it's not nice. You
just don't feel secure here."

The drugs have brought violence to the streets, with frequent muggings of
users or small-time sellers. Recently a seller had a shotgun pushed into
his groin as his nose was bitten off. Sellers pay standover men $100 to
work a corner.

An unoccupied doctor's surgery next to a supermarket is used as an
unauthorised shooting gallery. Addicts sleep in the doorway. Needles,
syringes and swab packets litter the yard.

When safe houses were first mooted in Victoria in August, the Premier, Mr
Jeff Kennett, said the idea sounded revolting. But a just-released interim
report by the State Government's drugs and crime prevention committee said
there is merit in the idea of "suitably regulated and controlled safe
houses" where addicts would sit at tables and prepare and inject their own
drugs with supplied paraphernalia such as needles, syringes, spoons,
cotton pads and bandages.

The proposal would need changes to the law to allow illegal drugs to be
administered on the premises. The committee, made up of Government and
Opposition MPs, urged greater public debate about the proposal, which last
year got the strong backing of the Wood Royal Commission in New South
Wales.

In its final report the commission pointed out that publicly funded
programs provide syringes and needles to intravenous drug users with the
clear understanding they are to be used to administer prohibited drugs.
"In these circumstances, to shrink from the provision of safe, sanitary
premises where users can safely inject is somewhat short-sighted," the
report said.

Mr Bala Mudaly, the coordinator of Springvale's Youth Health Support
Services, says the idea of safe houses would be hard to sell to the public
because of the view they would encourage drug use. "But the reality is that
the advantages would outweigh the concerns," he says. "The users would be
drawn into a medically controlled place and into contact with counsellors
who could help."

A submission Mr Micallef has prepared for the crime committee stresses that
safe houses would not be involved in dispensing drugs. "It would be a
legally operating facility that has no involvement in the promotion of
illicit drug taking and would implement procedures to ban dealing in or
near the premises," the submission says.

"It is an essential premise of safe injecting facilities that they are to
provide a safe and hygienic environment for injecting drug users to carry
out their activities in controlled and discrete surroundings rather than in
public places," it says. "One of the strongest arguments in favor of
trialling safe injecting facilities is their potential to save lives
through reduction in deaths caused by overdoses."