REGISTER ALL HEROIN USERS

YOUR newspaper certainly makes entertaining reading. On Tuesday we had the
editorial (We must break the drug barons) while five pages earlier we had
the headline, Drug lords to stay: police.

In Monday's edition a senior judge informed us that successfully prosecuting
the big drug dealers is now virtually impossible (Mr Bigs go free, 24/7).

Then we had Mr Court saying that he was not in favour of injecting rooms.
While injecting rooms would be only a partial solution, the comment must
have warmed the hearts of our drug dealers who would have been worried for a
time that the authorities actually might do something sensible for a change.

And, of course, we have the correspondents to these pages who come up with
all manner of righteous indignation about drug addicts and then advocate
so-called remedial measures which are savage, cruel and definitely
un-Christian.

To say that we can stamp out heroin addiction and supply is a nonsense. We
cannot even keep it out of our jails, which are supposedly totally
controlled communities. The illegal drug industry is one of our biggest
industries.

To say that heroin is killing our kids is a half-truth. Heroin need not
kill; it is the impurities, the varying quality leading to over-dosing and
the dangerous underworld environment in which drug addicts live that are the
main dangers to users.

Why not register heroin addicts? Allow them to buy heroin at commercial
prices from certain regulated outlets. This would overcome the problems
mentioned above. It would also enable us to monitor and reach users so that
they can be helped when they really want to get off the stuff. Even addicts
can hold down a job if they do not have to steal every day to feed their
habit.

And we would have fewer old ladies knocked over and killed, fewer home
invasions and reduce our prison population by about a third (each prisoner
in Casuarina costs between $40,000 and $60,000 a year to keep there -- and
we pay for that). It would even cure the Northbridge street-prostitute
problem.

R. W. Richards, Applecross.