DRUG CRITIC FIRES FAREWELL SHOT

SYDNEY - RETIRING Salvation Army anti-drugs crusader Major Brian Watters
yesterday attacked NSW Government drug policies, saying they were derailing
an effective national strategy.

Major Watters, an outspoken critic of liberalised drug laws, will resign
from active duty as head of the Salvos’ rehabilitation services command in
April ahead of his 65th birthday.

He is particularly critical of the NSW Government, accusing it of sidelining
his organisation in drugs policy making and starving it of funding.

Major Watters said his departure was marked by sadness at the road many
State governments were going down, with moves to open the nation’s first
drug shooting gallery in Sydney and a push in other States to use medical
arguments as a means of liberalising cannabis laws.

"I’m troubled by what I see as a well-organised campaign to soften Australia
’s attitudes to illicit drugs," he said.

Major Watters said State Government policies risked frustrating the national
program, which he said was aimed at reducing the number of drug addicts.

"We are currently at the national level . . . providing the most
comprehensive, multi-faceted strategy we’ve ever seen and it’s yielding good
results,” he said.

"But at some of the State levels there’s crazy things happening."

Major Watters was specifically critical of last week s announcement that a
safe injecting room would be set up in a disused King’s Cross pinball
parlour.

And needle exchange and methadone programs were simply providing the
ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, he said.

He said the Salvation Army, the biggest and most experienced drug and
alcohol rehabilitation services provider in NSW, was crying out for funding
while other organisations attracted the money.

Although the State Government had announced $94 million in funding for NSW
drug and alcohol treatment services, the Salvos hadn’t received anything in
the past five years except a one-off payment from confiscated assets, he
said.

The Salvos had also been left out of policy making in the wake of last years
drugs summit.

"We have definitely been pushed aside and ignored," Major Watters said.

He said this might be because his position on drugs didn’t gel with some of
the interested parties in the drugs debate or some of the ideologues within
the NSW health bureaucracy. Major Walters will continue his post as chainnan
of the Prime Minister’s National Council on Drugs until at least 2001.