HEROIN: DIVERSION FAILS TO STEM TIDE

The number of heroin-addicted Australians has more than doubled in the
past decade, despite the country leading the world in diverting users
into methadone treatment programs.

Two studies to be released in the Australian Medical Journal today
reveal that public health policies and rising methadone use - the drug
most widely used in treating heroin addiction - have failed to halt
the upsurge in heroin dependency.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales National Drug and
Alcohol Research Centre said that about 74,000 Australians, or seven
out of 1000 adults aged between 15 and 54, used heroin daily.

The figure reflects a global boom in heroin production and represents
a 118 per cent rise on 1984-87 estimates of 34,000 dependent heroin
users nationwide.

A separate study by the School of Pharmacy at Curtin University of
Technology in Perth revealed that methadone use in Australia was equal
with world leaders Switzerland, New Zealand and Denmark. The rate of
consumption grew by 17 per cent a year from 1984 to 1998, outstripping
all other countries.

Despite the seeming failure of methadone to curb the problem, the
study's authors said methadone programs remained the best way to
combat heroin.

"The rate of access to methadone has about kept pace with the increase
in the underlying problem," said the NSW report's senior author,
Professor Wayne Hall.

"If we expect methadone to get on top of heroin use we probably need
to get a lot more people into treatment than we have. Our best guess
is that we have only about a third of the heroin population in
treatment in any one time."

Queensland University's professor of alcohol and drug studies, John
Saunders, said: "The evidence for the benefits of methadone
maintenance in reducing mortality rates is now compelling."

But the Perth study concluded that the implementation of opiate-based
programs - which include methadone, morphine and pethidine - needed to
be improved in some regions.

Benny Monheit, from Monash University's Department of Community
Medicine and General Practice, said he welcomed the findings that
methadone consumption was rising, but state and Federal Government
initiatives were not coping with demand in states like Victoria.

"The few doctors that are providing methadone are really overwhelmed.
We've faced a 15 per cent increase in demand every year for the past
three or four years and we're just bursting at the seems. We just
can't cope," Dr Monheit said.

The NSW report estimated that the purity of street heroin in Sydney
increased from 10 per cent in 1979 to about 60 per cent in 1993-95.

"The nominal price has remained stable at $30 for a street 'cap', but
effective price per ounce of pure heroin has declined from about
$16,000 in 1979 dollars to $5000 in 1999 - the difference is even
greater when account is taken of inflation," it said.