ROCK SINGER WARNS CHILDREN ON ADDICT'S LIFE

The lead singer with the Irish rock band Aslan, Christy Dignam, a former
heroin addict, yesterday warned schoolchildren not to take drugs. He told
them his harrowing story of progressing to spending up to pounds 100 a day
on heroin.

He told delegates at the final day of a European-funded conference on the
threat of drug abuse in rural areas how, at one of his lowest points, he
prayed for help after contemplating suicide. "Death was my next step," he
told the students and delegates.

"My parents told me drugs would kill me. The first time I smoked hash I
didn't die and the first time I took heroin I didn't die, but this is a
progressive disease.

"Anyone who sells you hash or any drugs is not your friend. Before you take
it, ask yourself, `Would I give this to my little sister?', and if the
answer is No, then don't do it to yourself."

He described abscesses on the back of his legs from trying to find veins.
On holidays in Lanzarote he could not sit or lie down and ended up slicing
the abscesses with a blade.

The jugular veins have collapsed from sticking needles in his neck, and
four of the five people who started drugs the same time as him are now
dead.

Dignam also spoke out against the use of physeptone for people coming off
heroin. "We are creating a monster in this country with physeptone clinics.
It is called harm reduction, but you are just giving these kids a new
addiction.

"I have come off both heroin and physeptone. Physically it took me three
weeks to come off heroin, but it took three months with physeptone. To me
it is like getting lemonade and putting a gram of heroin in it and saying
it is not as dangerous. To me is it absolutely as dangerous."

The conference also heard how a European-wide early-warning system helped
to identify a new synthetic drug that resulted in five deaths in 1997 and
1998. 4DTA was sold as ecstasy but two tablets of it brought users close to
the overdose limit.

The early-warning system, which is in each member-state, led to the
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction to carry out a
formal risk assessment on 4-MTA. It concluded that it should be controlled
in the EU and it was subsequently listed as a controlled drug across the
EU.

The entire process took six months and was an example of the effective use
of information networks within the EU.