ADDICTS CANNOT BE LEFT TO DIE, SAYS BEAZLEY

SYDNEY: Opposition Leader Kim Beazley signalled yesterday his party would
take a softer line than the Federal Government in the drugs war, saying
addicts could not be left to die.

Speaking from a Uniting Church pulpit in western Sydney, Mr Beazley
congratulated the congregation for having the courage to agree to run the
first safe heroin-injecting room in Australia.

Later, Mr Beazley backed the establishment of supervised heroin injecting
rooms and called for the treatment drug, naltrexone, to be made available to
addicts at taxpayer expense.

"You have to have a complex response to the scourge of drugs in our
community," Mr Beazley said. Measures needed included improved coastal
surveillance and tougher penalties for suppliers.

"But you must keep addicts alive so that they have a chance to recover -
that's just logical."

Mr Beazley said any government he led would offer support for injecting
rooms, but that it was up to the states to establish and run them.

He also attacked the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee's decision
to subsidise the anti-addiction drug naltrexone for alcoholics, but not for
heroin users.

The decision means alcoholics can buy naltrexone for $20 a dose, while
heroin users pay up to $250.

"They [the PBS] have done it for alcohol - they should do it for heroin
users as well," Mr Beazley said. "The number of heroin deaths is rising.
You've got to try all the measures you can to turn around those dreadful
statistics."

However, Family Drug Support Network director Tony Trimingham backed the PBS
decision, saying further research was needed into the effectiveness of the
often-controversial drug. "Families are looking for cures and I think the
hype that's surrounding it is detrimental," he said.

Also yesterday, Mr Beazley defended his embattled frontbencher Cheryl Kernot
against a newspaper report on Sunday that she had spent as much time in
London this year as in regional Australia.

"Frankly, I thought it [the newspaper report] was desperately unfair," Mr
Beazley said.

"It's part of what has been exceptionally harsh treatment meted out to
Cheryl - I think absolutely unnecessarily, unjustifiably - in the media for
some considerable time now."

Mrs Kernot - switched to the employment portfolio in October after
complaining to Mr Beazley about the travel demands of her expansive regional
development, infrastructure, transport and regional services portfolio - had
spent only six nights in regional areas in the first six months of 1999, the
newspaper said.

In the same period, she had travelled to London on a week-long trip
sponsored by the British Government.

Mr Beazley said the report in the Sunday Telegraph ignored the plethora of
day-trips she had made in her previous portfolio and meetings that took
place with regional organisations in capital cities.