AT LAST, HOPE IN THE FIGHT ON DRUGS

OF ALL the statements made by Prime Minister John Howard on the scourge of
heroin addiction, his observation on Wednesday that "sending people to jail
for addiction alone is barbaric" was perhaps his most valuable contribution
so far. As the nation's leading political conservative, and hailing from
what might reasonably be regarded as the less socially progressive wing of
his side of politics, Mr Howard could have quite comfortably played to the
gallery by employing hardline rhetoric against addicts.

Certainly this is the view of many in the community, who instantly condemn
addicts as sub-human creatures who deserve nothing more than to be locked up
and the key thrown away. But in Ballarat this week, Mr Howard demonstrated a
wider understanding of the problems attendant to heroin addiction by
announcing the extension of a joint Commonwealth-Victorian diversion program
for young addicts. The program has been devised and tried in Victoria and
gives specially trained magistrates the option of directing drug offenders
into non-custodial treatment.

The program will now be adopted across the country. It gives people aged 17
to 25 who have not been exposed to the prison system opportunities to beat
their drug problem before they become persistent drug users. Police have the
option of referring offenders to treatment centres rather than simply
carting them off to a cell and placing them in the company of hardened
criminals.

Magistrates and police get training to deal with and assess young drug
users, and this represents a crucial development in the way key institutions
respond to the spread of hard drugs.

It is clear that the breadth of the heroin problem necessitates new
solutions and new approaches by police, the judiciary, and policy-makers at
state and federal levels.

Punishment via detention - the original approach, now decried by the Prime
Minister - has failed. The only real alternative is to embrace drug users,
to tell them that society has not given up on them, especially those who are
in the early phases of their addiction.

But the most effective approach would involve an all-encompassing brace of
policies - more punitive sanctions against dealers, a higher police
presence, thorough and widely available treatment centres, a variety of
diversion schemes and a trial of supervised injecting rooms. There is too
much disagreement in the community and between the political parties on
these measures to make it possible that all of them would be adopted.

But the capacity of the Bracks and Howard Governments to work together to
get this diversion program working gives hope that further common ground can
be found, and that easy rhetoric can again make way for genuine concern and
effective anti-drug policies.