AUSTRALIA'S FIRST HEROIN INJECTING ROOM OPENS

SYDNEY - Australia's first legal heroin injecting room began
operating in Sydney's red-light Kings Cross district on Sunday, but
its critics said yesterday it had failed to prevent overdoses only a
few metres from its door.

The controversial injecting room, sandwiched between strip clubs and
opposed by the federal government as well as the Vatican, opened from
6 p.m. to 10 p.m. after a court ruled last month its police licence
was legal.

Eight heroin addicts used the room, which aims to cater to 150 to 200
addicts a day, with one addict agreeing to professional counselling,
said medical director Ingrid Van Beek.

"A handful of drug users made use of the centre last night and this
will undoubtedly increase in the weeks ahead, especially when the
media attention wanes," said Reverend Harry Herbert of the Uniting
Church, which runs the centre.

The Uniting Church won a court battle in April to open a legal injecting room.

"I was there and I saw two ambulance officers, after the place had
closed, dealing with an overdose -- what is the point?" asked Malcolm
Duncan from the Kings Cross Chamber of Commerce, which plans another
court appeal against the centre.

Ambulance officials confirmed two people were found suffering from
overdoses near the injecting room on Sunday night, one of them while
the centre was open.

Opposition to a heroin injecting centre in Australia has been long
and bitter. Opponents have ranged from John Howard, the Prime
Minister, to Pope John Paul II to the United Nations.

In 1999, the Pope sent a letter to the Sisters of Charity ordering
them not to get involved in an injecting centre in Kings Cross. An
illegal injecting room in a Uniting Church in "the Cross" in 1999
lasted only a few days before police closed it down.

Mr. Herbert said the centre's aim was to reduce overdose deaths in
Kings Cross, not prevent all overdoses.

He said that in Frankfurt, Germany, deaths dropped from 127 in 1993
to 68 in the first year after an injecting centre opened, and to 31
in 1996.

Twenty per cent of heroin overdoses in New South Wales, Australia's
most populous state, occur on the streets of Kings Cross, with about
100 overdose deaths a year in the area.