ANGER AT DRUG ACCORD WITH US

Australian drug experts last night expressed dismay at the Clinton
administration's endorsement of the Howard Government's drug policy, warning
that the country risks an HIV epidemic if it follows America's failed
zero-tolerance approach.

They said America outspent other nations in policing drugs but had a growing
number of drug overdose deaths, one of the highest imprisonment rates in the
developed world, and an ``epidemic'' of HIV that had spread from drug users
to their partners and into the community.

But in Washington, the Clinton administration endorsed Canberra's approach
to the heroin crisis, with America's leading policy director comparing legal
injecting rooms to ``pouring alcohol into an alcoholic''. The director of
the Office of National Drug Policy, General Barry McCaffrey, rejected the
options of heroin trials or safe injecting rooms, saying: ``Drug treatment
and therapeutic intervention can work.''

Mr Howard, who met General McCaffrey in Washington, said the discussion had
``reinforced in my own mind that we have the right balance in Australia''.

Asked if the talks focused on any new strategies for the broader drug abuse
problem, Mr Howard said: ``I think it is fair to say that we agreed that one
or two strategies that are in the air in Australia are not desirable, such
as shooting galleries. Neither of us thought there was any merit in going
down that path.''

General McCaffrey called for a greater global effort to tackle a world
``awash with heroin'', saying the United States consumed 11 tonnes out of a
world production of 360 tonnes of heroin.

In Melbourne, the deputy director of the Macfarlane Burnet Centre for
Medical Research, Dr Nick Crofts, was among those to express dismay.

He said Australia had avoided an HIV epidemic with an early focus on needle
exchange programs in one ``of the greatest public health triumphs of this
century''. But Australia was losing its reputation as a world leader in drug
harm minimisation under the Howard Government, Dr Crofts said.

``Why are we looking to the Americans, for God's sake? It's so depressing
... Under Howard, we're looking to the country that has coped worst in the
world,'' he said. ``We're going backwards.''

Zero tolerance in America had hindered efforts to get users to use clean
needles, he said, stressing that under Mr Howard's approach, Australia
risked going back-ward to having a similar HIV epidemic.

In Canberra, the ACT's Minister for Health and Community Care, Mr Michael
Moore, yesterday vowed to pursue a plan for safe injecting rooms within
three months. Mr Moore, an independent minister in the Liberal ACT
Government, said he did not think Mr Howard would get the support necessary
in the Federal Parliament to override the ACT proposal. ``I'm flabbergasted
that John Howard took lessons from American drug policy. It's a dismal
failure,'' he said. ``We don't need to learn from them ... They should be
learning from our harm minimisation strategy. US policy is harm maximisation
policy.''

The president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Dr Alex Wodak,
compared going to the American Government for advice on drugs with ``finding
the people who designed the iceberg detectors on the Titanic and installing
them with our Collins class submarines''.

``They can teach us you can spend much more than we are spending on illicit
drugs per capita and we can get even worse outcomes.

``We can learn how to have an uncontrolled epidemic in relation to drug
users and HIV. How to have ever-increasing deaths from drug use, that's what
the US does. We can learn how to have 2 per cent of our citizens locked
behind bars,'' Dr Wodak said.

He said Mr Howard had misused the term ``shooting galleries'' in a
mischievous way when he referred to safe injecting rooms in Washington.
Shooting galleries were underworld-run establishments in America where users
went to shoot up using hired - and re-used - equipment to avoid the risks of
arrest associated with carrying their own needles around. The ``draconian
and repressive'' American laws had led to shooting galleries there while, in
Australia, there were none.

The chief executive officer of Open Family Australia, Mr Nathan Stirling,
said he was confident that drug reform would progress in the next six months
in Victoria and NSW regardless of Mr Howard's views.

``American drug policy is an example of what not to do. Why would you copy
what they are doing?'' he said.