GREEN LIGHT FOR CHURCH INJECTING ROOM AT KINGS CROSS

The Uniting Church has been awarded a licence to operate Australia's first
legal heroin injecting room in Kings Cross, paving the way for the facility
to open its doors before the end of the year.

Just days after the Victorian Liberals forced the Bracks Government to
abandon its own trials of legal heroin injecting rooms, the Police
Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, and the director-general of health, Mr Mick
Reid, have issued an operating licence for a disused pinball parlour at 66
Darlinghurst Road.

The site has passed a raft of rigorous criteria including ground-level
entry, easy ambulance access and proximity to Springfield Mall.

But it is understood that the two new strict - and previously unknown -
conditions have been attached to the licence in a bid to allay resident and
community concerns. These are:

* A prohibition on pregnant women using the facility; and

* A ban on providing needles or syringes to anyone other than those planning
to use the centre.

The licence approval comes a year and a half after the historic NSW Drug
Summit, which recommended an 18-month trial and clinical appraisal of one
medically supervised injecting room in Sydney.

The Rev Harry Herbert of the Uniting Church said: "We are very pleased to
get the licence, at last. This means we can start the eight-to 10-week
building renovation works and start recruiting staff and so open the doors
before the end of the year if all goes well."

Dr Alex Wodak, head of St Vincent's Hospital drug and alcohol services,
signalled anxiety about the ban on needle exchange.

"There is justification for a ban on pregnant women and that is that there
is a general principle in medical research that pregnant women are excluded
from virtually all trials. This trial of an injecting room is after all a
form of medical research," he said.

"The ban on needle exchange is unfortunate because there may be people who
come into the place and decide they are not going to use the facility as an
injecting room but are going to use some other aspects of it such as
counselling and that should be encouraged."

Dr Wodak said the new conditions once again highlighted the very great
political pressure being exerted by opponents of the trial which "distorts
the trial and risks diminishing the benefits of the facility".

The search for a suitable Kings Cross buildings without a colourful past
proved extremely difficult, delaying the project by several months and
forcing police to apply "more pragmatic" probity checks.

A spokesman for the specially formed community group, the Kings Cross
Community Coalition, said a decision on whether to proceed with a legal
challenge would be discussed at a meeting on Monday.

THE STORY SO FAR

20.5.99 The NSW Drug Summit approves a package of reforms to drug laws,
including trial of a medically supervised heroin injecting room.

28.7.99 The Sisters of Charity announce they would run the trial.

28.10.99 Vatican orders the Sisters to abandon the experiment.

29.11.99 The Uniting Church says it will step in and take over.

16.12.99 PM says NSW will breach international drug conventions if trial
proceeds.