HANDS UP SPELLS NO FOR HEROIN TRIAL

Dandenong last night became the first municipality to reject the
Victorian Government's proposal for a supervised injecting facility
trial.

The decision comes as a further blow to the government's drug strategy
after Melbourne City Council last week voted to reject the Wesley
Central Mission's fully operational facility in Little Lonsdale Street.

The ALP-dominated City of Greater Dandenong was one of five
municipalities the Victorian Government was hoping would accept a
trial of a heroin injecting facility.

While the Melbourne City Council has not ruled out an injecting room
at another venue, Dandenong has rejected any such facility throughout
its municipality. This includes Springvale, a suburb identified by the
chairman of the government's drug policy expert committee, David
Penington, as an area of high street injecting drug use.

Of the five targeted municipalities, only Yarra and Port Phillip
remain committed to the proposal. Melbourne and Maribyrnong have until
October to vote on the issue.

Dandenong passed two motions against an injecting facility.

The first, passed seven votes to four, left the way open for further
community consultation on the issue pending the evaluation of trials
in other municipalities.

"By rejecting this model we have not ruled out further consultation,"
said Geraldine Gonzales, who moved the motion. But a second motion,
with no reference to any future change of policy, was passed nine
votes to two, reflecting the sentiment of a public meeting last month
in which 90 per cent of the 800 who attended opposed a trial.

John Kelly, who moved the second motion, said he did not want the
community dragged through the pain and anguish of further consultation
when public sentiment was opposed to any trial.

"My motion is that this council rejects in total and perhaps closes
the debate forever and a day," he said.

The council has been criticised for it's community consultation
process which reached only 1200 of the municipality's 135,000 residents.

Chairman of the Springvale Drug Action Committee, Eddie Micallef,
spoke in favor of a trial at last month's public meeting and said the
council's decision was premature and that council had "crumbled to a
vocal minority".

"People who support injecting facilities on an humane basis are not
the sort of people who jump up and down at public meetings or harangue
council officers on the phone day and night," he said.

A spokesperson for the acting Health Minister, Bronwyn Pike, played
down the decision. She said injecting facilities were only one part of
the council's broader local drug strategy which the Victorian
Government would continue to help Dandenong develop.New South Wales
yesterday became the first Australian state to approve the use of the
controversial detoxification drug Naltrexone in public hospitals to
treat heroin addiction.