FIRST-TIME HEROIN USERS UP 50PC IN 3 YEARS: REPORT

First-time heroin use has jumped by 50 per cent over three years despite
record seizures of the drug, according the Australian Illicit Drug Report
issued yesterday.

The Chief Commissioner of the Victorian Police, Neil Comrie, said that
heroin remained the biggest problem drug, with a 38 per cent increase in
the number of arrests for dealing or possession in the 1998-99 financial
year, taking the total from 10,000 to almost 14,500.

Victoria topped the list with an almost 50 per cent jump in numbers
arrested, while the ACT experienced a very slight decline in the number of
arrests, down from 86 to 83.

Issued annually by the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, the
information is collected from law-enforcement, community and government
agencies.

Availability of heroin had continued to grow last year, with Sydney the
place where it was easiest to find, and cheapest. The cost of heroin varied
substantially around the nation, but Sydney prices had halved since 1996,
down from $400 a gram to between $240 and $200 last year. There were no
specifics for ACT prices, but they are often closely related to Sydney's.

Purity had increased slightly in the ACT, but the national average had
jumped from 57 to 65 per cent pure in the last financial year. An increase
in heroin use in Aboriginal communities in the Shoalhaven region was noted.

There was a trend towards smoking, rather than injecting heroin among young
Asian males, and middle- and upper-class professionals wanting to avoid
needle marks.

The most recent figures available for heroin overdose deaths were from
1997, when 636 users died. Most deaths occurred in the company of others,
who were afraid to call for help, fearing police involvement. The most
common reason for not getting help cited by witnesses who were not drug
users, was that they did not want to become involved.

And this was fatal, given research that said instant death after an
overdose was very rare. In cases of overdosing, users generally died about
three hours after injecting.

Federal Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone said the year had seen had been
''extraordinary successes'' in intercepting heroin and other drug supplies
before they reached the streets. In NSW, 390kg of heroin had been seized in
one hit and large quantities of cocaine, including 225kg in 1998 and 500kg
last month had been taken out of the system. She said these results proved
that the drug problem was ''not intractable''.