NURTURE THE KEY TO TREAT YOUNG ADDICTS

What do you do when your child is wasting away in front of your eyes,
losing themselves, stealing to feed their heroin habit?

Richard, 54, who was addicted to the drug from 1973 to 1994, says don't
lock them in their room to dry out and tell them what to do.

"It's like a man telling a woman what it feels like to have a baby," he said.

They needed love and nurturing because they felt excluded from society.

And according to Rev. George Davies, who runs Perth Inner City Youth
Service, society has to change its approach to the heroin crisis.

Its leaders should get closer to addicts and come up with proper social
policies. "Every time the Premier opens his mouth I hear simplistic and
harsh emotional words," he said.

Mr Davies, who has been caring for Perth's drug kids since 1978 after
leaving country New South Wales, has stepped on a few toes in government
and in the Uniting Church by being so outspoken.

Richard says he started using drugs as a young teenager in Sydney during
the hippie days when taking drugs was cool and you could blow your problems
away.

He and his wife brought up two daughters but they paid a hefty price.

He said heroin addicts were liars and it became destructive. It was not
until Richard was jailed for a cannabis offence in the early 1990s that he
made the break.

But it does not matter, according to Richard, whether it is methadone or
naltrexone. He supports all the programs and wants to see safe injecting
rooms and a free heroin prescription trial.

He said heroin was easier to get off than methadone and if the proper
supports were available it would save lives. He claims that the heroin
death toll is higher than records show because many of the deaths recorded
as suicides are heroin overdoses.

Richard has lost 80 per cent of his friends to the drug and said if one
life could be saved by these programs then it was worth it.

Mr Davies said the disillusionment of the young generations was brought
about by the realisation of the baby boomers that they could not, in fact,
change the world.

He tells of hanging out with the drug addicts at Scarborough Beach and
police, the "hooligan squad", marching in on them, with one policeman
reversing into a group of young people.