ZERO TOLERANCE SUPPORTERS FIGHT INJECTING ROOMS

KERRY O'BRIEN: As communities across Australia search for solutions to the
growing problem of drug addiction, law reform programs have focused on the
need for safe injecting rooms for heroin users.

But now, supporters of a zero tolerance policy to drugs have struck back at
such moves towards liberalisation which they claim will increase rates of
drug use.

A three-day drug summit in Sydney organised by Salvation Army anti-drugs
campaigner Major Brian Watters has been told a tough approach to drugs has
worked overseas and Australia has been urged to follow the example.

But critics of the hardline approach say it's bound to backfire and will
simply force the problem underground. Genevieve Hussey reports.

POLICE OFFICER: Against the wall. You, too, hands on the wall.

FELLOW POLICE OFFICER: This one hasn't been used yet. You can see that the
heroin's still in it.

DR ALEX WODAK, ST VINCENTS HOSPITAL: We have something like 100,000 people
in Australia who are injecting drugs on a regular basis and something like
an additional 200,000 injecting drugs occasionally, and that number is
doubling every 10 years and probably in the last five years it's grown
faster than in the previous 25 years.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: It's a worldwide issue -- how to halt the rising tide of
drug abuse?

BOB CARR, NSW PREMIER: When you've got a choice between a dirty infected
needle and a clean one for a wretched kid in a lane in Redfern, his mother
wants him to be using the clean, rather than the dirty needle.

MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT: Hear, hear. BOB CARR: It's a matter of saving lives.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Last year the NSW Parliament hosted an historic summit
which brought together experts from around the nation looking for answers.

It endorsed a wide-ranging program of harm minimisation strategies,
including needle exchange programs and the establishment of Australia's
first heroin shooting gallery.

CLOVER MOORE, NSW INDEPENDENT MP: -- proposal that the message we want to
send, isn't one of tolerance. It's about compassion, it's about help for
survival.

It's about keeping young people alive long enough for them to be able to
come off drugs.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: But This week, another drug summit organised by the
chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs, Salvation Army Major
Brian Watters, reached a very different conclusion.

DR JACK GILLIGAN, DRUGWATCH INTERNATIONAL: A drug addict is committing
suicide on the instalment plan.

They don't care. People think we have a rational solution for people who
aren't going to act rationally when it comes to drugs. They are already
destroying themselves.

They don't care whether the needle is clean or dirty, or what have you.
That's our mythology. We think they're thinking like you and I would think,
but that isn't where they are.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Supporters of a zero tolerance drug policy, like Jack
Gilligan from Drugwatch International, claim Australia has got it wrong.

He says Australia's losing the battle against drug use and addiction and
it's time to get tough with all drug possession and consumption illegal,
laws strictly enforced and drug treatment mandatory for all users.

DR JACK GILLIGAN: The message of the law, it does play pretty much of an
important role.

I mean, if you remove the fence from the apple orchard and there's no
penalties for taking the apples, there's not going to be many apples on that
tree by the end of the day.

DR ALEX WODAK, ST VINCENTS HOSPITAL: Illicit drugs is primarily a health and
social issue.

There is always going to be an important law enforcement component, but
making law enforcement carry the burden of our response to illicit drugs is
setting up law enforcement to fail.

We've got 30 years of experience of failure in this area on a resounding
scale.

ANTHONY HUMPHREYS, YOUTH-IN-SEARCH: My mother committed suicide when I was
five years old due to drug issues. She was a heroin addict and she just
couldn't take it anymore so she shot herself one while I was at school.

My father also committed suicide when I was 12 years old. He took an
overdose.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Anthony Humphreys knows first-hand the far-reaching
effects of drug addiction. Placed in foster care after his parents' deaths,
he suffered sexual and physical abuse.

He's now an ardent anti-drugs campaigner who believes tougher laws would
save lives.

ANTHONY HUMPHREYS Basically, my whole life is a result of their
irresponsibility with their taking the drugs. My mother was 20 when she had
myself and she died when she was 25.

That's a very young age to commit suicide.

MALOU LINDHOLM, SWEDISH GREEN PARTY: We had big problems in the '60s. We
created them ourselves. We were said to have been the first drug liberal
country in Europe.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: On the streets of Kings Cross, Swedish Greens' politician
Malou Lindholm is appalled by the ease with which drug users can obtain
syringes.

MALOU LINDHOLM: You can see the traces of what has probably been going on
last night, last evening -- the needles, spoon.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Sweden has moved from a liberal to tough approach to drugs
and now has random drug-testing and mandatory treatment centres.

MALOU LINDHOLM: When all other countries in Europe had an increasing figure
of drug abuse and drug addiction, the figures in Sweden went down.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: The hardline Swedish approach extends even to needle
exchange programs, designed to help stop the spread of HIV.

MALOU LINDHOLM: If it's so important with clean needles and clean rooms,
then there must be clean stuff, then the abusers must be provided with clean
drugs.

And where do you get clean drugs?

You get it from prescription from doctors -- which we have seen in
Switzerland and in other places in Europe -- and what actually comes out is
that the State becomes a drug dealer.

DR ALEX WODAK: We do know that needle exchange programs do work and this has
been investigated more thoroughly than probably any other health
intervention in the last 10 years.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: Director of the Sydney Alcohol and Drug Service, Alex
Wodak, doesn't believe Sweden's policies have worked.

He claims their drug use rate is now rising and their prohibitive policies
have only resulted in a high death rate from drug overdose.

DR ALEX WODAK: In a climate of intolerance, who's going to admit that
they're a drug user? Secondly, even in Sweden, with their reported levels of
drug use, the levels are going up in the 1990s. Another problem is that the
Swedes aren't too proud about their record of drug overdose deaths.

They have 250 deaths for a population of less than nine million.

GENEVIEVE HUSSEY: While they disagree on the approach needed, both sides of
the argument agree Australia is at a crossroads and the choices it makes
will be critical.

POLICE OFFICER: No more syringes?

DETAINEE: No.

MALOU LINDHOLM: This talk about injection rooms, shooting galleries, may be
there's a point where you have to choose which way shall you go.

Because if you go for that one, that to me, means that you accept drugs and
abuse and that young people spoil their life as a normal part of society.

DR ALEX WODAK: Zero tolerance is really becoming marginalised and rightly
so, because people now see through this. They see the major issues as how
our society is going to decrease death, disease, crime and corruption.

And no-one seriously believes anymore that we can arrest and imprison our
way out of trouble, as these people are suggesting.