MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR LAWYER LAYING DRUG DEMONS ON THE LINE

As one of Australia's most prominent criminal lawyers, Andrew Fraser
thought he had seen the justice system from the inside. But he found
himself with a closer look when police raided his family home early
one morning last month.

Spending a few hours in the "holding cage" at the city watchhouse
after his arrest on cocaine charges was a "humbling experience", he
says, even though he had in the past visited clients there, some of
whom had also been on drug charges.

Mr Fraser yesterday said that he had been using cocaine the night
before his home was raided and was coming down from the effects of the
drug. "Once you are on the other side of the fence, you are deprived
of all of your power. I sat there in the cage and thought to myself:
`It has come down to this'."

Mr Fraser yesterday told his story to 3AW but was careful not to
prejudice his case before it is heard in court. He intends to plead
guilty to charges of using and possessing cocaine but will contest a
charge of trafficking in the drug.

In an interview with The Age, Mr Fraser said the entire experience had
forced him to take stock of his life. "Just imagine 22 coppers in your
house at 3.30 on a Sunday morning? But give the police their due, they
were very professional," he said.

Mr Fraser estimated he spent about $100,000 on his personal cocaine
habit last year. But even in the months before his arrest, Mr Fraser
thought he had his cocaine habit under control. "What have I got to
show for $100,000? Public humiliation and disgrace, potential loss of
my house and potentially my liberty and profession," he said.

"It is not a bad penalty to pay for a bloke who has overdone it
socially ... Drug use is that insidious. Someone like me who is
supposed to be smart enough has still been caught by it."

Mr Fraser, 48, of St Kilda West, said that in the weeks before his
arrest, his family and friends warned him that his addiction was out
of control. "It is that insidious that it has put everything on the
line, with no pun intended."

He admits his career was a hard haul since he started his articles in
1971. But when he became successful in the 1980s and was flush with
money, he started using cocaine.

"I was a single bloke and I was a lawyer. I was offered cocaine a
number of times and I agonised over what to do," said.

It wasn't long before he became a "social user" of cocaine, as he
describes it.

"Four of us would buy a gram and it would last us all night. But it
all crept up on me and the next minute I was on the merry-go-round.
When the music stopped, there was no chair. I could see I was blowing
it," he said.

"Drugs take no prisoners. It is there to make dough and uses you up
until you are a shadow of your former self."

He said no section of society was immune from the claws of
drugs.

"Drug addiction is not the exclusive domain of those street kids who
live in St Kilda or Fitzroy. It pervades through every echelon of our
society, like or not," he said.