STATES TELL PM: HANDS OFF INJECTING ROOMS

The Prime Minister has been accused of directly contradicting the Foreign
Minister, Mr Downer, over his warning that Australia would breach
international treaty obligations if NSW proceeded with its heroin injecting
room trial.

And yesterday, the NSW and Victorian governments issued a united and blunt
warning to Mr Howard: the States will formulate their own drug policies and
will not tolerate Federal intervention.

Mr Howard signalled yesterday he would be reluctant to take the radical
step of using the Federal Constitution's external affairs power to force
NSW, Victoria and the ACT to abandon plans for injecting rooms.

As the States and the ACT dug in, Mr Howard conceded the Federal Government
had "no direct authority" by which it could stop the injecting rooms.

"What I am saying to the NSW Government is, "Can we talk about this?' I'm
not threatening anything at this stage."

Mr Howard's call to postpone the trial, outlined in a letter to the
Premier, Mr Carr, this week, suggested that Australia would breach
conventions signed with the United Nations International Narcotics Control
Board.

However, this is directly at odds with statements made by the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, according to the shadow attorney-general, Mr
Robert McClelland. Mr Downer had told Parliament on August 25, 1997, that
the treaties allowed limited illicit drug use for scientific and clinical
research trials.

Mr Downer provided the advice to Parliament in response to a question on
notice from Mr McClelland, who says the answer was "at odds" with the Prime
Minister's words on Tuesday.

Mr McClelland had asked if Australia's treaty obligations prevented State
or Territory parliaments from introducing trials to address the drug
problem which may "involve a position which is less than complete
prohibition?".

Mr McClelland, whose question related to the proposed ACT heroin trial,
also asked - if there were prohibition - would the "Government attempt to
redress the situation in future negotiations?". Mr Downer said the treaties
allowed the limited use of narcotic drugs for research, including clinical
and scientific trials. He said Article 2 of the Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs prohibited illicit drugs but allowed amounts which "may be
necessary for medical and scientific research only".

For the Federal Government to resort to its external affairs power - used
by Labor in the Franklin Dam case - to overcome the narcotics convention
would open Mr Howard to criticism from both conservatives and small "l"
liberals within the coalition. Mr Howard said in the end Australia "makes
it's own decisions on what is good for Australia. But part of what is good
for Australia is paying some regard to the treaties that we signed".

Speaking in Melbourne, NSW's Special Minister of State, Mr Della Bosca, and
the Victorian Minister for Health, Mr John Thwaites, said the United
States' prohibitionist approach had not worked.

"That prohibitionist stance, the traditional stance of the United States,
has been a disaster - they've got the worst drug problems in the world. We
don't need them to tell us how to run our system in Victoria," Mr Thwaites
said.

"We've got to try alternatives, we've got to save those lives and get drug
users off the streets and into safer environment."

Mr Della Bosca said the Uniting Church would be continuing its work to find
a suitable site for the injecting room trial and he hoped this would be up
and running by the second quarter of next year.

Mr Howard told the ABC's 7.30 Report last night that he did not come to the
issue from a "totally abstract, academic point of view".

"I spent many hours talking to parents whose children had died from drug
overdoses, who've suicided," he said. One frustration was that parents in
similar situations responded differently, some wanting a more liberal
approach, others wanting a tougher one.