SPECIAL LAW WILL STOP RAID BY POLICE

NSW Premier Bob Carr addresses Parliament on Australia's first heroin
shooting gallery, to be protected against police raids by a legal exemption.

Australia's first shooting gallery in Kings Cross will need a special legal
exemption to prevent police raids.

Premier Bob Carr yesterday said the Government had rejected a proposal to
scrap the offence of self-administration of a prohibited drug, the law
police cited when they raided an illegal injecting room at the Wayside
Chapel in May.

Mr Carr said the Government would legislate a special exemption for the
shooting gallery.

He also said Police Commissioner Peter Ryan and the Health Department would
hold negotiations with the injecting room's operator, the Sisters of
Charity, to work out how police would operate near the facility.

"We're going to change the law in the spring session of Parliament to make
the medically supervised injecting room legal and we're going to negotiate
police protocols as well," Mr Carr said. "So that will provide the legal
framework for this operating."

Mr Carr said the Government decided against changing the
self-administration law because police said it was a useful tool in
stopping addicts shooting up publicly.

The Salvation Army's Major Brian Watters said police would be forced to
turn a blind eye to drug dealers who would congregate around the shooting
gallery.

"We should not be allowing people to use drugs on the street; we need to be
very firm on this," he said.

Mr Ryan has previously raised concerns about drugs having a "honeypot
effect" on crime, a claim rejected by St Vincent's Hospital alcohol and
drug service head Alex Wodak.

"I think we all know that drug injecting has been going on in Kings Cross
for about 30 years, it has been some sort of a honeypot there since the
late 1960s," Dr Wodak said.

"I don't think personally an injecting room is going to change anything
except people are going to be injecting in a place where they can get help
rather than injecting on the streets where they offend passers-by and they
die."