DEATHS BY HEROIN SET TO MATCH ROAD TOLL

Heroin overdose deaths have climbed so steeply they may match the road toll this year, and the Australian National Council on Drugs is demanding fresh measures to fight the problem.

A council position paper released yesterday has stuck to its neutral position on the introduction of supervised heroin injecting rooms. Instead, it calls for a boost to prevention efforts, including more treatment services and co-operation between police and paramedics.

While official figures for the national heroin death toll are still not available for last year, the council believes it is likely to be about 20 per cent above the 1998 toll of 737. On unofficial estimates, a similar increase is likely for this year, putting the figure around 1,000 - similar to the likely total for traffic deaths for Australians aged 15 to 44.

The council would not give an estimate for this year but "acknowledges that a downward trend in ... overdose deaths will not occur this year".

The chairman of the council, Major Brian Watters, told the Herald last night he did not believe the continued rise in deaths called into question the Howard Government's "tough on drugs" strategy. It was focused on much more than law enforcement, and included significant funding for expansion in treatment, education and drug offender diversion programs.

The council reviewed the issue of injecting rooms and reinforced its statement of last December that should the rooms be trialled, "the initiative should be rigorously evaluated before any consideration of their continuance".

Major Watters said the council had been in place only since March 1998 and the strategy "really has not had a chance to bite".

He called on state authorities to give serious consideration to making the overdose antidote, narcan, available to heroin users, so it could be administered immediately to overdose victims. He suggested it could be possible for users to be supplied with the narcan when they picked up clean syringes.

The council's position paper stated there was evidence of an increased level of "polydrug use", in particular the use of heroin with alcohol and benzodiazipines, which had "significantly contributed to this increased mortality rate".

The council also acknowledged there was further evidence suggesting mental health problems among drug users sometimes resulted in deliberate overdose suicides. It said some studies estimated that up to 60 per cent of all heroin users had experienced at least one overdose.

It called for a greater role for paramedics in dealing with overdoses and for more clarity on police discretion while attending non-fatal overdoses when an ambulance was already present.

Major Watters said the importance of the council's discussion paper had been sadly accentuated by the recent spate of deaths in NSW and the ACT (where six or more individuals died from overdoses on one weekend) and the increasing number of ambulance call-outs to attend overdoses.

The council called for increasing primary prevention efforts, including:

Increased availability of treatment services, such as methadone and other drug substitution programs;

Greater understanding between police and paramedics in managing overdoses;

More education of drug users on safer practices, including dangers of combination drug use;

Increased support and education for families and friends of users;

A willingness to trial innovative programs, including training users in resuscitation techniques and assessing increased availability of narcan.