DRUG RESCUE PLAN DEFIES SUMMIT: MPS

A State Government plan to provide alternative methadone services for
230 addicts on the Central Coast has sparked a revolt among local
Labor MPs who argue the rescue plan contravenes Drug Summit
recommendations.

Wyong Council voted in May to ban any new private methadone clinics
and paid out $70,000 of ratepayers' money to buy out a lease and close
down the region's oldest and largest clinic.

The 12-year-old Pacific Centre Methadone Clinic at Long Jetty is due
to close next month, creating a crisis for the local area health
service, which faces a critical shortage of methadone places and long
waiting lists in other Central Coast clinics and surgeries.

According to a rescue plan prepared by the Department of Health, two
smaller methadone dispensaries will have to be established at Long
Jetty and Wyong Hospitals to serve between 60 and 80 patients each.
Another 60 or so patients would be added to Gosford Hospital's
methadone clientele, and the balance would be looked after by GPs and
pharmacies.

The compromise, which requires creation of new facilities and
allocation of extra staff, will cost the department up to $700,000 a
year. The private clinic, which charged clients $6 a dose, cost
taxpayers nothing.

But according to the Labor member for The Entrance, Mr Grant McBride,
the closure of the Long Jetty clinic had been in the wind for two
years. He said a "head-in-the-sand approach" would not solve the problem.

Mr McBride argued that the summit recommendations adopted by the
Government aimed to reduce the number of larger clinics and disperse
methadone services throughout the community, particularly through an
expanded pharmacy network.

"I am concerned that at the very first test of our new drugs policy
after the Drug Summit, they come to us with short-term proposals and
no long-term plan. If this issue isn't done properly, all the
Government's momentum is being lost," he said yesterday.

The Labor member for Wyong, Mr Paul Crittenden, has also raised
concerns with the Special Minister of State, Mr Della Bosca, who has
been charged with overseeing the implementation of Drug Summit
recommendations.

But Wyong Council has placed the State Government in an extremely
difficult position as it has ostensibly left 230 patients without a
methadone dispensary and the local area health service stretched for
resources because of a booming population.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Health, Mr Knowles, said details of
the rescue plan would not be made public until they were finalised
next week.

* A second clinic offering the anti-heroin drug naltrexone has closed
its doors in less than a week.

Clean Start, a Bondi Junction clinic which offered naltrexone
detoxification under sedation followed by a six-month maintenance and
counselling program, will not take any new clients from this week.

Anaesthetist Dr Andrew Pembroke said yesterday that all patients now
on the program would be able to finish their courses. The field was "a
very difficult one" and he was unable to continue, he said.