ANTI-HEROIN 'WONDER DRUG' GETS GO-AHEAD

NSW public hospitals will become the first in Australia to offer the
controversial anti-heroin drug naltrexone to addicts undergoing
withdrawal and rehabilitation.

The Special Minister for State, Mr Della Bosca, said yesterday that
the drug, which has not yet been listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits
Scheme (PBS), will be available in public detoxification units by the
end of the year.

Speaking at Drug Summit 2000, an alternative three-day conference
convened by the Salvation Army and other proponents of "zero
tolerance" drug law approaches, Mr Della Bosca said the State
Government did not believe in a "magic bullet" for drug treatment and
aimed to provide as many alternatives as possible.

"We are committed to exploring the full range of options - all the
evidence on the treatment of drug addiction shows that a 'one size
fits all' approach won't work," he said.

"Different individuals respond better to different methods, that is
why the Carr Government is willing to trial new alternatives."

Mr Della Bosca said the NSW Health Department would now work on
developing clinical protocols to govern the use and prescription of
the drug in detoxification. Once complete, these would then be sent to
Australian clinicians working in addiction treatment for comment.

Once the guidelines were approved, he said, doctors in the public and
private sector would be trained to use the drug in withdrawal treatments.

"We will continue to urge the Federal Government to list it on the PBS
... together with other approaches like buprenorphine, which is also
showing good early results," he said.

Naltrexone is a drug which binds to the same receptors that attach to
opiates such as heroin and methadone, thus blocking their effects.

Available in Australia since March last year, it can be prescribed to
block the craving for opiates as well as alcohol. It has also been
widely publicised here and overseas as a "miracle cure" in which
addicts undergo heroin withdrawal with naltrexone under general
anaesthetic.

This "rapid detoxification" has also resulted in several deaths as
naltrexone also makes patients more sensitive to heroin and therefore
more vulnerable to overdose if they relapse.

However, in NSW hospitals, naltrexone will not be provided under
general anaesthetic. Instead, it will be administered with milder
sedatives on the second day of detoxification, in a bid to manage and
reduce the symptoms of withdrawal and effectively cut the withdrawal
period by up to two days.

The decision was widely welcomed by delegates to the alternative
summit, who are bitterly opposed to the State Government's decision to
also trial harm minimisation approaches such as a medically supervised
heroin injecting room.

All speakers, including the Opposition Leader, Mrs Chikarovski, the
anti-cannabis activist, Dr John Anderson, and the former member of the
European Parliament, Ms Malou Lindholm, spoke passionately against the
injecting room trial, arguing it would send conflicting messages to
Australian youth.

Mrs Chikarovski attacked the media for popularising the 18-month Kings
Cross trial: "We need to have the courage to stand up and say that
just because something is popular in the media doesn't mean it's
right," she said.

The Salvation Army's Major Brian Watters said the injecting room would
counteract preventative approaches.