DRUG SUBSIDY FOR ALCOHOLICS

Alcoholics will be able to get subsidised naltrexone treatment from
February but heroin addicts, who use it to help stay clean after they have
detoxified, must continue to pay the unsubsidised price of about $250 a month.

Experts welcomed the decision of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory
Committee to make the drug available to alcohol-dependent people for a
subsidised cost of about $20, saying it would improve access to the drug.

Combined with counselling, naltrexone could help between one in five and
one in two alcoholics stay abstinent - double the rate of conventional
therapy, they said.

The distributor of the drug, Orphan Australia, did not apply to the
Government to subsidise the drug as an aid to help heroin addicts detoxify,
but plan to make such an application when Australian trials in its use for
this purpose are complete.

The co-scientific director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating
Centre for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Professor John Saunders,
yesterday said the greater availability of naltrexone would be a "great
step forward" for treating alcohol dependence.

The drug, taken as a tablet a day for three months or more, blunted
alcoholics' craving for alcohol, he said.