INJECTING ROOM SPLIT

THE heroin injecting room trial has split Melbourne. While the
18-month trial has won the support of many legal and medical groups,
community anger is running high.

Most of the traders and residents the Herald Sun spoke to yesterday
opposed the move.

The few who agreed with it did so in principle, but do not want the
injecting facilities located in their back yards.

Footscray Matters spokeswoman Carole Demirdjian said it would be the
nail in the working class suburb's coffin.

"The anger here is enormous. What's wrong is to put a room here in
Footscray because it's already a disadvantaged area. That's not fair."

Smith St Business Network spokeswoman Myrto Aretakis said they
supported the trial in principle but did not want rooms in shopping
strips.

Springvale Drug Action Committee chairman Eddie Micallef said it
supported the trial, but the location was a key issue.

"The traders are opposed to it in the Springvale Rd shopping centre.
I've give my personal commitment to traders that it will not go
there," he said.

Grey St Neighborhood Watch spokesman Ken McLean said St Kilda was so
densely populated it would be virtually impossible to locate a drug
room.

"It would totally conflict with the residential area."

The Salvation Army said supervised injecting rooms were only a small
part of the drug treatment strategy.

Spokesman John Dalziel said the Victorian drug strategy should include
an education program aimed at schools.

Hanover Welfare Services said Melbourne needed heroin injecting rooms
now to avoid a crisis at the city's homeless shelters. Chief executive
Tony Nicholson said shelters were struggling to keep their
drug-addicted residents alive because of lack of resources.

"We commend the report and the State Government for accepting its
recommendations, but we need injecting rooms now," he said. "Let's not
wait for any more reports."

The Australian Drug Foundation congratulated the government for giving
the green light to injecting rooms.

"This is a necessary step forward if the incidence of heroin-related
deaths in Melbourne is to be reduced," ADF chairman Rick Swinard said.

"The proposal also is a test of our community's willingness to search
for new solutions to this tragic waste of human life."

Law Institute of Victoria president Michael Gawler said drug addiction
needed to be treated as a health issue. "We support a policy that
turns away from the failed direction of more police, more punishment
and more prisons," he said.

Open Family Australia said the introduction of injecting houses would
save lives and encourage users' rehabilitation.

"The safe consuming rooms will give young people trapped by heroin the
ability of getting a service that will be rehabilitative, and become
drug free," said Open Family youth worker Les Twentyman.

The Community Coalition for a Drug Free Society was against injecting
rooms, saying the government should focus on providing more
rehabilitation services at hospitals.

The Australian Medical Association's Victorian council voted in favor
of the plan on Tuesday.

Vice-president Allan Zimet said the AMA was keen to see properly
monitored injecting rooms as well as research into their efficacy.
"These resolutions look at tactics and ways of treating this growing
menace," he said.

"The harm minimisation approach to drug abuse ... looks at treating
the addiction and subsequent illness rather than the crime."

The council also lent support to prescribed heroin trials for a
selected group of addicts, further research into the medical use of
heroin and the use of heroin neutraliser Narcan. It called for the
decriminalisation of possession of small amounts of cannabis for
personal use.

"We want to avoid people being incarcerated and exposed to other
criminals, where they are going to learn bad habits," Dr Zimet said.
"One has to recognise that marijuana and drugs are so prevalent in our
society that the rules have changed."

The recommendations are among 13 passed by the AMA's 94-member
Victorian council.

The council's resolutions must be approved by the board before final
acceptance as AMA policy.