INJECTING ROOM TRIALS PLANNED FOR CITY ONLY

No supervised injecting room would be set up in country Victoria,
where heroin users were more likely to shoot up and die at home,
acting Premier John Thwaites said yesterday.

He said the supervised injecting room plan targeted the "chaotic
street use" of heroin.

There would be no change to the government's policy of restricting its
planned supervised heroin injecting room trials to metropolitan Melbourne.

Trials are proposed for up to five suburban areas of high "chaotic"
street drug use, where addicts inject, and in many cases overdose, on
the street.

"That's not the situation in country and regional Victoria, where
people are using drugs not on the street but (more often) in their
homes," Mr Thwaites said.

"What we've got to do is pour resources into rehabilitation and
treatment to try to get them off drugs; but we also have harm
minimisation approaches so that in the home people know what to do if
there is a friend or family member who overdoses."

His comments come as a parliamentary delegation leaves for a study
trip to examine anti-drug measures in the US, Germany, Sweden and
Switzerland.

The government hopes tours of injecting centres in Frankfurt and
Zurich will win over opposition health spokesman Robert Doyle.
Melbourne's trials are contingent on the Liberal Party backing
government legislation enabling them to proceed.

Mr Thwaites said extraordinary amounts of heroin were entering
Australia, the result of massive increases in opiate production and
ever-expanding crops in Asia and other parts of the world.

Responding to a special report in The Sunday Ageyesterday, he said
country Victorians had not been spared.

Repeating a recent comment, he said there was no "Berlin Wall around
Melbourne".

"Drugs are right throughout country Victoria, just as they are right
throughout country Australia ...

"We are very concerned to make sure we have our drug programs there in
places where people are using drugs."

The Bracks Government is seeking information about the extent of drug
abuse in the state. Monitoring the distribution of syringes under the
needle exchange program was one method, Mr Thwaites said.