NO URINE TESTS, NO METHADONE, ADDICTS TOLD

Methadone patients will need to sign good-behaviour contracts, including
binding themselves to random urine testing, to continue on the anti-heroin
addiction program.

The new deal is part of the State Government's undertaking to implement
last year's Drug Summit recommendation for an expanded methadone program,
shifting from the traditional bigger dispensing clinics to local
pharmacies. Already, 300 pharmacies are involved in the NSW program.

The contract system is also a response to residential anger at the
behaviour of methadone users around suburban clinics.

"Methadone is a privilege and if people want access to it, the program is
going to have to be more tightly run," a Government source said yesterday.

Under the contracts, addicts must promise not to congregate around clinics,
not to inject drugs, to participate in urine testing and to swallow
methadone at the dispensing point unless granted special permission for
takeaway doses.

"The contracts will address concerns from the broader community about
antisocial behaviour at methadone dispensing clinics," the Special Minister
of State, Mr Della Bosca, said yesterday.

He said the contracts, to be implemented over the next eight weeks, were
part of a $93 million four-year expansion of funding for drug treatment
services.

Mr Della Bosca said failure to comply with contracts, which also committed
dispensers to professional standards, could lead to addicts being forced
from the program.

He said the scheme was intended to overcome the "honeypot effect" of large
dispensing clinics and to ensure that those on the program did not persist
with intravenous drug use.

Mr Della Bosca called on the Federal Government to speed up approval for
the heroin treatment therapy, Buprenorphine.

This follows the Federal Government's rejection of the controversial
naltrexone from listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, thereby
precluding its widespread use for heroin treatment.

But Mr Della Bosca said Buprenorphine had been shown in testing to be more
effective than both methadone and naltrexone.

He said the opioid analgesic, being tested in NSW, did not have the
overdose risk of naltrexone, was taken in tablet form every second day, was
used on 50,000 French addicts, retained 87 per cent of patients in
treatment, and could be used to withdraw from methadone as well as heroin.

Mr Della Bosca said it was understood the Therapeutic Goods Administration
was planning to consider Buprenorphine's registration in June but that this
might put off a final Commonwealth decision until next February.

"In the meantime, doctors across the country could be using it to help save
lives," he said.

Anti-drugs campaigner Mr Tony Trimmingham said the contracts scheme for
methadone users threatened to destablise people already in fragile conditions.

The Opposition Leader, Mrs Chikarovski, said no contracts system would work
unless it required a commitment by people on the program to ultimately get
off methadone.