DRUG INJECTION CENTERS SAID ILLEGAL

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. drug experts warned governments today that they
risk breaking international law by approving drug injection centers where
addicts can get clean needles and have a safe place to shoot up.

So-called ``shooting galleries'' have sprouted up in the Netherlands, Spain
and Switzerland as an experimental way to get drug users off the street and
decrease transmission of infectious diseases, such as HIV, that can be
spread by shared needles.

But in a report today, the International Narcotics Control Board said such
drug injection rooms ``facilitated'' drug trafficking and represented the
first step toward legalizing narcotics.

``By permitting injection rooms, a government could be considered to be in
contravention of the international drug control conventions,'' the
Vienna-based board said. Governments would violate these laws, the board
said, by facilitating, aiding or abetting crimes of possessing or using
drugs ``as well as other criminal offenses including drug trafficking.''

The board -- a 13-member, quasi-judicial organization that oversees
implementation of U.N. drug treaties -- noted that drug conventions were
created decades ago to eliminate the injection rooms of their time: opium dens.

Dr. Jose Cabrera, director of the Madrid regional government's drug abuse
program, said he was not worried about the Spanish program's legality.

``What the Madrid regional government offers is an aid center with a
doctor, a social worker and nurse, where the main goal is to provide health
care for drug addicts who have never had such assistance,'' Cabrera told La
Vanguardia newspaper.

In an annual report, board members also called for greater access by poorer
nations to pain killers, which are often too expensive to buy in countries
struggling with more basic medical problems such as malnutrition.

In the next 15 years, however, two-thirds of the estimated 15 million new
cancer cases a year are expected to occur in the developing world, U.N.
statistics show.

While opium-based drugs, including morphine, have proven effective in
easing pain in cancer patients, most of the world's morphine supply is
consumed in wealthy countries. Denmark, for example, has an annual
consumption rate of 74.4 grams per 1,000 people while Madagascar's rate is
0.0001 grams.

``While large quantities of drugs are available on illicit markets, it is
unbelievable that in the age of globalization, many people in developing
countries have no access to drugs which are essential for the alleviation
of pain and suffering,'' said a statement from the board's president,
Antonio Lourenco Martins.

In a related note, the board expressed concern that while the developing
world was experiencing a chronic undersupply of pain killers, the
industrialized world was seeing a problem of overmedication with some drugs.

The United States has the highest per capita consumption in the world of
amphetamines and other central nervous stimulants, while Europe is the
biggest consumer of hypnotics and sedatives, the board found.

``Overmedication leads to pain and suffering of a different kind to that
seen in undersupplied countries,'' the board said.

It also reported on the increasing use by the young of marijuana,
particularly in Europe. In Switzerland alone, the prevalence of cannabis
use among 15-year-old students has quadrupled in the last 12 years, while
in France, one-third of secondary-school students have experimented with
the drug.

The board expressed particular concern that cannabis can be obtained at
hemp shops and on the Internet, and that the unregulated sale of cannabis
seeds had fueled a surge in indoor cultivation.