REASON AT HEART OF THE 'NO' LOBBY

OUT of touch . . . in a state of denial . . . people who neither care
nor think . . . a self-proclaimed moral majority forever shouting "No!"

Who are these weirdos? Well, if you follow the public exchanges,
you'll recognise them immediately: they're the opponents of legally
sanctioned heroin injecting rooms.

Devils incarnate, no less, who lack experience in the field and are
incapable of empathising with the terrible suffering of drug addicts
and their families.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Forget the odd silly cry from
the fringes. Go to the heart of the opposition and you'll find people
who care only too much.

People who have done their clinical homework. People, even, who have
"been there, done that".

People whose opposition to perpetuating hard-drug dependency in lawful
parlors is grounded in priorities that put education, prevention and
rehabilitation first.

When I encounter gratuitous attacks on the opponents of shooting
galleries, I think of people such as Dr Joseph Santamaria, a
consultant physician who has worked in the field of alcohol and drug
addiction for more than 30 years - exemplary service in the public
interest.

No, this doesn't make him infallible. But it certainly makes him
knowledgeable and caring.

Dr Santamaria, as editor, recently published a series of contributed
essays, drawn from international experience, on the downside of "safe"
injecting rooms and on other drug issues of the day.

The book, "Drugs Dilemma: a way forward", is available in some book-shops or
direct from News Weekly Books (9326 5757) for $13.95, GST included.

Contributors include Elaine Walters, an educator who has written
widely on cannabis, Dr Lucy Sullivan, Sydney academic and board member
of Drug-Watch Australia, and Athol Moffitt, a former judge of the NSW
Supreme Court.

Here, however, I would like to concentrate on a lesser-known
contributor, a young Melbourne woman, because her story offers a
perfect rebuttal to today's familiar smears.

Inexperienced? Hardly. Sharon PoJiock was the victim of an agonising
workplace accident in which her spine was broken.

Part of the treatment was morphine. She became addicted.

It took years for her to break free - a painfully slow journey out of
a nightmare which is not in the book but which Mrs Pollock permits me
to mention here.

No empathy? Hardly. Once fully recovered Mrs Pollock became fired with
a passion to bring hope to others.

She joined Westside Community Care, a church-backed venture based in
Maidstone and operating among western suburbs youth.

So overwhelming were the needs found in the shadow of drugs that last
year the project was put in abeyance while Mrs Pollock and a nurse
travelled overseas to research best-practice models in detoxification
and rehabilitation.

IT is Mrs Pollock's experiences in such places as Switzerland and the
Netherlands - the jewels in the crown of the shooting gallery lobby -
that form the basis of her diary record in Drugs Dilemma

Closed mind? Hardly. She left Australia "uncertain of my feelings",
but returned with "the clear certainty that injecting rooms are not
the way to go".

Mrs Pollock quotes a clinic director in Zurich as saying "I don't
believe in telling people what to do with their lives. Some
participants have been on the heroin program for five years, since its
inception."

He also says: "Every one of our people still use (drugs) on the
streets." The clinic, apparently, has about 100 clients a day and each
can inject heroin, on prescribed limits, up to nine times daily, with
a minimum half-hour between shots.

And so to Arnhem in the Netherlands, to a clinic where there is a much
larger clientele -- about 450 in any one day -- and where they smoke
heroin rather than inject it.

Here the manager claims to have been the innovator of "safe" injecting
facilities 10 years ago: and no, he admits, "in 10 years I have never
got anyone off heroin".

Yet in Australia we have some leading advocates of shooting galleries
firmly on the public record as favoring wholesale drug
decriminalisation.

Mrs Pollock sees better hope in compulsory detoxification and
long-term rehabilitation centres such as in Hassela, Sweden.

Possibly the wisdom is sinking in, given the recent State Government
announcement of youth detoxification units (albeit on a mini-scale)
for Geelong and Ballarat.

Plus continuing signs that firm police action in Melbourne is bearing
fruit.

Who knows, we might yet come to a collective conclusion that supplying
buckets of "safe" petrol to arsonists is no way to stop a deadly fire.