PM ACTS ON DRUG ROOM

The Prime Minister yesterday demanded the NSW Premier put the State's
proposed safe injecting room on hold, declaring it could breach Australia's
international obligations.

Mr Howard called for State and Federal officials to confer urgently after a
letter from the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board
reaffirmed that injecting rooms were contrary to drug control conventions.

But the NSW Government last night was defiant, insisting the controversial
injecting room would go ahead.

"John Howard should be defending the right of the Australian community to
respond to the drug problem as it sees fit," the NSW Special Minister for
State, Mr Della Bosca, said. "An international agency should not be
dictating Australian policies."

However, the Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, intervened last night to
veto moves to establish the room in the former La Strada Italian restaurant
at Potts Point. Senior police had expressed concerns about the more recent
background of the building, on the corner of Macleay and Hughes streets.

Mr Howard, a critic of injecting rooms, had not intervened directly before
to try to stop the NSW experiment, backed by the Federal Opposition Leader,
Mr Beazley, at the weekend.

Despite Mr Howard's hard line in yesterday's letter to Mr Carr, if the the
Federal Government wants to override NSW it may have to resort to using its
external affairs powers - which the Coalition generally opposes being
invoked to kill State laws.

Mr Howard wrote to Mr Carr: "I cannot ignore assertions that what is
proposed could be in breach of Australia's international obligations".

He said that "in light of the board's views, I ask that you do not proceed
with your proposal until the Commonwealth, in discussions with the States
and Territories, has had an opportunity to consider all of the implications
involved".

In a letter to Australia's mission to the United Nations in Vienna, the
president of the International Narcotics Control Board, Mr A.L. Martins,
said the board could not justify the injecting room as a "clinical" trial.

"The State's sanctioning of a facility where drugs may be abused 'safely'
cannot be considered as a medical or scientific trial under the drug
control conventions," Mr Martins said in a letter dated November 17. A
spokesman for Mr Howard said it reached his office last week.

Mr Martins said serious legal problems also existed with injecting rooms,
which did little to advance the medical treatment of drug addiction and
undermined the deterrent effect of criminal law.

He specified several conventions the injecting room could breach and also
said injecting rooms could "send the wrong message that Australia is a
place where illicit substances can be abused with impunity".

"As the host of the year 2000 summer Olympics, Australia should instead be
promoting healthy lifestyles free from any substance abuse."

Mr Martins was responding to Mr Della Bosca, who had written in October
explaining the proposal had come out of the May State drugs summit and
reflected "similar developments in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands".

Mr Della Bosca had written that he understood the plan might be of some
concern to the international board but stressed it would be a 12-month
trial in only one location.