STATE NOT SET UP FOR HEROIN ROOMS: LIB

Victoria does not have the integration of health and community services
necessary to ensure supervised injecting facilities are a success,
according to state Liberal health spokesman Robert Doyle.

Speaking on his return from a tour of drug facilities in Europe, Mr Doyle
acknowledged injecting rooms had worked overseas but said it was apparent
well integrated services were essential for them to succeed.

"People who do it (injecting rooms) ... integrate their services very
well," Mr Doyle said.

He said in Melbourne the necessary close cooperation between services had
not been achieved, and for a city with one of the worst drug problems in
the world, it was embarrassing that drug users could face lengthy delays
for detoxification and rehabilitation.

But he insisted he had an open mind to the government's proposed trial, due
to be debated in the next session of parliament.

"There is still a bipartisan approach to drugs," he said.

"I went away with an open mind (and) I want to talk with my colleagues,
particularly about this idea of integrating services and what part that
might play."

One of the government's key drug adviser's, VicHealth chief executive Rob
Moodie, said the Victorian Government should push ahead with the plans to
tackle heroin use regardless of whether the legislation was defeated.

Dr Moodie, a member of the Penington committee who led the delegation from
both sides of politics on the mission to inspect drug facilities in the
United States, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, also said injecting rooms
should incorporate accommodation, food, clothes, counselling and medical
care for users.

Hanover Welfare Services has already indicated it is prepared to run an
injecting facility out of its crisis accommodation centre at Southbank as
part of a full approach to tackling heroin addiction among the homeless.

However, Dr Moodie said the highly successful Swiss approach to reducing
the death toll and public nuisance associated with the open drug scene
consisted of an integrated four-pillar strategy: prevention, treatment,
harm reduction (including supervised injecting) and improved law enforcement.

Dr Moodie said it was important that police had a strong presence, but
"policing the closing down of the open drug scene didn't work until they
started offering services for the users to use".