AT LAST, A WHIFF OF REALITY COMES INTO THE DRUG DEBATE

It may be too late. But we should be glad the Bracks Government's drug
advisers have at last started -- STARTED 97 to level with us about
"safe" injecting rooms.

Just six months ago, the head of the government's Drug Policy Expert
Committee, Professor David Penington, was suggesting injecting rooms
would save many lives.

"In many cities in Germany, Holland and Switzerland, sale injecting
houses have been operating for up to 10 years," he wrote for one newspaper.
"Death rates have fallen five to 10-fold in those cities."
Other drug "experts" make even wilder boasts. Youth worker Les
Twentyman, for instance, claimed: "Safe injecting rooms with childcare
facilities would save hundreds of Australian lives each year."
Victorians have heard this fable so often that many now reluctantly
support injecting rooms. "After all," they sigh, "they do save lives."
No. They don't. Or let me put that more accurately: there is no firm
evidence anywhere that "safe" injecting rooms cut the heroin toll.
None.

To double-check, I told Prof. Penington, during a vigorous to-and-fro
of emails between us, that I'd like to see any proof he might have
found. I have not heard from him since.

But, to his credit, his committee this week conceded in an issues
paper that "injecting facilities will not, by themselves, drive down
the overall rate of deaths from drug use".

It even admitted they arguably "send the wrong message" and "may lead
to an increase in drug use".

That's precisely what a NSW Parliament joint select committee thought
in 1998, after touring injecting rooms in Holland, Germany and
Switzerland, and why it gave injecting rooms the thumbs down.
For much the same reasons, top crime-fighting bodies, inchiding the
FBI and International Narcotics Control Board, also oppose them. So
does our own police Chief Commissioner, Neil Comrie.
Far from saving many lives, injecting rooms actually encourage users
to keep taking a dangerous drug. They do that by helping them lose
their fear of death or arrest, and by introducing them to other
addicts and dealers.

Add a coffee shop to the place, and you've got a real drug society
going.

So let's guess how many disaffected teenagers will want to grab some
free syringes from a needle exchange and join the crowd at the
injection room. Ten? One hundred? One thousand? How high will this
sacrifice to "safe" injecting rooms be?

To tempt the addicts further, Prof. Penlngton this week said our
injecting rooms may even offer subsidised meals and a coffee shop, and
are unlikely to be attached to anything as grim as a hospital.
Yet he also denied they would become "honeypots", attracting addicts
and dealers like flies and scaring the locals.

But the proot is already on our streets. Only last month, two people
were jailed for selling heroin from a mobile needle exchange.
And the Wesley Central Mission's de facto injecting room in the city
now often has dealers and their clients hanging around outside.
But no price seems too high to keep addicts addicted. Dr Penington's
committee even seems ready to ditch democracy, if that's what it takes
to get injecting rooms.

In its paper, the committee says the "legal framework" for the rooms
may be worked out by "an agreement between the government, Victoria
Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions that . . . offences
would not be prosecuted94 .

I didn't know our laws were now decided in private chats with public
servants. Instead of in parliament. Thank heavens Chief Commissioner
Comrie won't have a bar of this.

The manic push for injecting rooms really took off early last year,
when many addicts died. Something must be done, we were told. Our war
against drugs doesn't work. (War? What war?)
But guess what? The rate of overdose deaths this year is half what it
was this time last year. That may change, but it's a tip not to panic
too soon.
Maybe there's still time to try first things first. Like, fix the
shortage of drug-treatment places. Like, put more police on streets to
catch drug dealers. Like, study Sweden's prohibitionist policies,
which -- unlike injecting rooms 97 do seem to work.

Above all, we could tackle the sense of rootlessness and betrayal many
young Australians seem to feel, leaving them hungry for drugs.
Yes, let's do something. Something that works.