LIBS AT ODDS OVER DRUG TRIALS

Tension deepened in the State Opposition yesterday after leader Denis
Napthine dismissed a proposal by frontbencher Robert Doyle for a heroin
trial as a "red herring".

Mr Doyle, the Opposition's health spokesman, said yesterday he was in favor
of a prescription heroin trial and would try to convince the Liberals to
support it.

But Dr Napthine told The Age the issue was "dead in the water".

"It's not on the agenda. It is a red herring," he said. "I think it would
be most unhelpful for the media to get sidetracked on it."

Dr Napthine said the party's position on heroin trials had not changed
since it supported the ACT's proposal three years ago.

Mr Doyle, considered as a leadership aspirant, said he was not speaking on
behalf of his party.

He said a trial was "one of the most persuasive weapons against drug abuse"
he saw on his recent overseas research trip with VicHealth chief executive
Rob Moodie and Bruce Mildenhall, parliamentary secretary to the Premier.

He said prescription heroin broke the nexus between crime and drugs, was
administered by health professionals and guaranteed the purity of the
substance.

Mr Doyle acknowledged there was "no magic answer" in either prescription
heroin or injecting rooms, and any trial would need Commonwealth approval.

Health Minister John Thwaites said Mr Doyle's support of a heroin trial
meant he would have to support supervised injecting centres because it
"blows out of the water any argument that injecting facilities send the
wrong message on drugs".

But he said it was "a bit of a Clayton's suggestion" until Prime Minister
John Howard agreed to heroin trials.

The government's chief drugs adviser, David Penington, said he had no doubt
that a controlled heroin trial would be needed in due course but it was not
feasible at the moment because the Prime Minister had ruled it out.

Mr Doyle also called on Premier Steve Bracks to apologise for using heroin
deaths as "a stick" to beat the Liberal Party with. Mr Doyle said comments
by Mr Bracks that the opposition would be responsible for heroin overdoses
if it did not support a trial of supervised injecting rooms were
"inflammatory and offensive".

Mr Bracks yesterday said the government would delay parliamentary debate on
injecting room legislation until October after Dr Penington requested more
time.

Dr Penington said the Liberal Party had indicated it would not support the
legislation unless there was more detail available.

He said much of that information would not be available until local
governments had developed their responses to the proposed injecting rooms.

A delay would also allow his committee's second report on anti-drug
measures to be released by October. "One of the difficulties is that media
coverage has highlighted the injecting facilities as if they are being
offered as the answer to Victoria's heroin problem and that was never the
basis on which they were recommended," he said.

When asked if the government had got it wrong by requiring his committee to
report on injecting rooms first, Dr Penington said: "It's not for us to say
whether it was right or wrong - they (the government) had perhaps different
priorities in terms of timing, in terms of what was needed to be done to
save lives.

"But as things have worked out, with the way the public debate has run,
it's certainly been rather counter-productive that there's been so much
focus on the injecting facilities and not on the broader context."