HEROIN SEEN NOW AS 'HARDLY CRIMINAL'

Possession of small amounts of heroin was so widespread that people "hardly
regard it as being criminal", Chief Justice Jeffrey Miles said yesterday.

"Let's face it, heroin is in widespread use in the community and the jail
system . . . it wouldn't take us very long to leave this courtroom and go
and find some heroin," Chief Justice Miles said.

"The law has almost forgotten possession of heroin, it is so much part of
everyday life that it is no longer an aggravating factor any more. It is
commonplace and commonly people in the community . . . hardly regard it as
being criminal."

He was commenting at the trial of Robert Scott, 23, of Kambah, who has
pleaded guilty of possessing heroin for supply and of possessing stolen
property.

Scott was found with a large number of stolen power tools in October 1999.

In arguing for a treatment order rather than a jail sentence, Scott said
urinalysis had returned traces of methadone because a fellow Belconnen
Remand Centre detainee had played a joke on him.

Armed robber Craig Paul Meyboom - who escaped from the centre last month and
has since been recaptured - had put methadone in his coffee without telling
him, "because he thought it would be funny to see me smashed".

Detainees in the centre were constantly playing jokes, like putting rotten
eggs in cells, on each other.

He also said heroin and syringes were freely available in the centre.

He asked not to be sent to jail, saying he had been there for a time while
in custody because the remand centre was too full.

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life in and out of jail - Goulburn
[jail] is not a nice place," he said.

"It is just not the nicest place. I have seen different things down there:
people getting bashed and the after-effects of someone being stabbed."

Scott's counsel, Craig Everson, asked that Scott be given a suspended
sentence and a treatment order to help him continue to get off drugs. The
court has heard Scott has made previous unsuccessful attempts to stop using
drugs.

Chief Justice Miles will sentence Scott, who has spent the past 10 months in
custody, on Friday.