DRUG REFORMERS STAND UP TO BE COUNTED

Courage. That is the quality needed for the Australian people to
extract something lasting from the NSW Drug Summit. And brains. And
tolerance.

Premier Bob Carr raised the need for courage in his opening address
and co-chairwoman Joan Kirner said: "I think we will need courage over
the next few days."

Professor David Penington said: "It will require both civil and
political courage to examine and rethink established
conventions."

The need for courage became clear as delegates took up their positions
in the drugs debate while trying, with mixed success, to keep their
minds open.

Mr Carr said that, in any week, NSW ambulance officers attended 87
drug overdoses, about 13,900 people had drug treatment, about 70 per
cent of jail inmates were there for a drug or alcohol-related offence,
nearly half the drug offences were related to cannabis, 70 people were
admitted to hospital because of illicit drugs, about 600 because of
alcohol, and 950 related to tobacco.

While Mr Carr called for an end to the confrontation between the
zero-tolerance and harm-reduction positions, the National Party
Leader, George Souris, said he wasn't concerned with addicts but with
those at risk who could still be helped.

The Police Commissioner, Peter Ryan, wasn't prepared to concede that
the war had been lost - "we are making inroads into the way drugs are
distributed" - but said drug seizures had little, if any, impact on
availability and price.

Professor Penington called for separate approaches to marijuana on the
one hand and heroin and cocaine on the other, saying prohibition would
be no more effective than it had been with alcohol in the US.

If there was broad agreement on anything, it was that there was no
simple solution and a variety of responses was required from health
and law-enforcement authorities. Joe Latty showed courage. He told how
he tried LSD at 13 and was given heroin for his 16th birthday. He had
"lived to use and used to live", a phrase which stunned co-chairman
Ian Sinclair.

Now a worker in the computer industry, Latty has been drug and
alcohol-free for 20 years. Why did he start? "I just wanted to try
something new, flirt with danger. And away I went."

By the time he left school he was consumed by his obsession. "I would
die for some people but, if they stood between me and my drug, I would
kill them."

Kristine French, who described herself as daughter, mother,
grandmother and recovering heroin addict who manages a crisis centre,
showed courage.

She said addiction enabled people to look in the mirror and see
someone else. She recalled her last day of drug-using: "What looked
back from the mirror scared me to death."

Dr Don Weatherburn, crime statistician, said the roots of drug abuse
were found in poor parenting, poor school performance, unemployment
and abuse of legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco.

Professor Margaret Hamilton said: "Drug users are citizens - our
children and increasingly our parents. Let's not wage war on them."