DRUGS TSAR ADVISES SMOKING NARCOTIC AFTER MYSTERY DEATHS

The government's drugs tsar has urged heroin addicts to smoke the
drug.

The anti-drugs co-ordinator Keith Hellawell said that inhaling heroin
was better than injecting heroin, after a mysterious infection
contaminated batches of the drug and killed 12 people in Glasgow.

He said that the problem had become a crisis, which was why he was
recommending addicts avoid needles if they had to take heroin.

The government denied that the advice represented a softening of Mr
Hellawell's anti-drugs stance.

Britain has responded to the spate of deaths by issuing a Europe-wide
warning that other batches of heroin could be similarly lethal.

"The advice is it's better not to be involved in the first place and
that's why we are getting involved in schools with children from the
age of five," said Mr Hellawell.

"But at the moment, when you are in a crisis, yes, receive medical
advice, go for medical advice - smoke it rather than inject it."

A Cabinet spokesman said Mr Hellawell was not shifting his strict
anti-drugs stance. "He told people to seek medical advice and was
merely pointing out that it is less dangerous to smoke heroin than
inject it. It is a case of which is the less hazardous."

The spokesman added: "He remains firmly anti-drugs and his comments
were not a change in policy in any way."

Mr Hellawell had also rejected the idea that there should be a
nationwide amnesty whereby addicts could ask health professionals to
check heroin they possessed with the permission of police. Instead,
they should be looking to get off heroin, with methadone the best way.

"The wealth of evidence is that methadone is the best way to go and
what we would very much like is for people to present themselves for
treatment."

Experts in Glasgow believe a new type of micro-organism may be
responsible for deaths in both Glasgow and Dublin in the past month.

The possibility that a hitherto unknown organism could be to blame, as
was the case when Legionnaire's disease appeared in 1976, emerged as
Greater Glasgow Health Board said that 12 deaths in the Glasgow area
shared a common cause with seven in Dublin.

Dr Laurence Gruer, head of addiction services with GGHB, said there
will be more tests at laboratories in England and America but
scientists were no nearer to solving the mystery.