THE TRADE OFF

Sceptics were proved wrong as the NSW Drug Summit passed 168
recommendations for radical drug law reform with overwhelming support this
week. However, as Paola Totaro and David Humphries report, much of the
wheeling and dealing went on behind closed doors.

IT WAS a turning point. Ian Doric Glachan, 65, grey-haired and
conservatively dressed, stood to address the NSW Drug Summit.

Scheduled in the second-last speaking spot late on Wednesday evening,
Glachan - who lists gardening, Rotary and the Anglican Church as his
interests in the Parliamentary Handbook - spoke to a near-empty chamber,
most of the delegates too exhausted to stay on for yet another speech by
yet another MP. However, by the time he had finished, his listeners had
bucked up.

Early the next day, the import of the quietly spoken country Liberal MP's
words travelled quickly outside the red-leather Upper House chamber through
the corridors and into the offices of a handful of key negotiating Labor
MPs, most importantly that of the Special Minister of State, John Della Bosca.

Glachan's story, simply told, was this: the people of his constituency had
battled with the drugs problem for many years. It was nothing new, but just
a few weeks ago the community had received "quite a shock". "One day, in
the main street at lunchtime, a young man collapsed as a result of a drug
overdose," he told the chamber. "He had a friend with him and, fortunately
for him, that friend called for assistance. A crowd gathered, the ambulance
people arrived and they were able to assist them. He was able to recover
due to the support of his friend and the availability of medical attention.

"Tragically, though, the next day the friend who assisted him overdosed
himself, but he did not recover. He died alone ... People of my generation
wonder what leads young people such as that young boy, who began to use
drugs as a teenager, to do that. We find it hard to understand and cannot
fathom."

Glachan told the chamber that the summit offered the chance for people such
as him to listen and learn, to weigh up options and to try to understand
what "form of illness" it was that led young people to drugs.

All solutions, he argued, perhaps even controversial moves like trial
heroin-injection rooms or a relaxation of drug laws which he did not
support, should at least be debated.

For Della Bosca, charged with the seemingly impossible task of forging
common ground between those advocating harm minimisation and those
advocating zero-tolerance law enforcement, Glachan's open-minded stance
represented a glimmer of hope.

A senior Government source said: "The truth is, you don't really get a more
hardline, a more conservative fellow than Glachan ... and if he was talking
like that .. we listened."

Indeed, from day one of the summit, all but a handful of Coalition MPs had
appeared to abandon their "keep an open mind" pledge, establishing a tough
anti-reform line and refusing to countenance any relaxation of drug laws,
or trials of new harm-minimisation strategies.

Led by the Leader of the Opposition, Kerry Chikarovski, and her drug debate
first lieutenants, Peter Debnam and Andrew Fraser, the Coalition focused on
pushing for greater law enforcement and drug treatment resources from the
Government. Della Bosca watched proceedings minutely, and by midweek his
near-legendary political antennae were quivering. A gut reading of the
summit's mood - and the community outside - seemed to crystallise with
Glachan's genuine stance. Indeed, as expert after expert speaker added to
the pool of scientific and medical knowledge in the chamber, inside the
working groups - the summit's engine-rooms - tactics moved into a higher
gear and trade-offs began.

Della Bosca's working group, innocuously titled Drugs and Community Action,
consisted of 21 delegates from factions as diametrically opposed as the
singer and vehement anti-drug law reform campaigner Normie Rowe to the Rev
Ray Richmond, architect of the Wayside Chapel's bold injection room
experiment. There, Della Bosca launched a painstaking, forensic mission to
tease out agreement on a handful of basic, common-ground principles and
values - from acceptance that some communities and families felt
overwhelmed and hopeless and were "looking for leadership and positive
ideas" to the need to recognise drug users as "part of the community".

Once agreed, these principles became a tool for Della Bosca as he worked on
the wording of possibly the most controversial summit recommendation: the
heroin injection rooms.

Most of the work here, including a proposal to decriminalise
self-administration of heroin, was driven by the Attorney-General, Jeff
Shaw, and his Criminal Law Review Division, but the final wording - a
masterpiece of careful, pragmatic language - had Della Bosca's fingerprints
all over it.

The recommendation said: "The Government should not veto proposals for a
tightly controlled trial of medically supervised injecting rooms in areas
where there is a high prevalence of street dealing in illicit drugs from
non-government organisations in defined areas where they incorporate
options for primary health care, counselling and referral for treatment,
providing there is support for this at the community and local government
level.

"Any such proposal should be contained in a local Community Drug Action
Plan developed by local agencies, non-government organisations, volunteers
and community organisations. These should be submitted to full public and
community consultation processes (such as those used in urban planning law)
and preferably a local poll. They must be part of a comprehensive strategy
for local law enforcement, health, community and preventative education
inititatives."

Della Bosca's ability to extract a compromise from the summit - it was
passed overwhelmingly and included the support of seven Liberal MPs -
probably represents his first real test since he shifted from ALP party
boss to Parliament (and the ministry) at the election two months ago.

It is particularly striking in the light of the passionate views held by
the many more conservative delegates such as the Salvation Army's Brian
Watters, Angela Wood, the mother of ecstasy victim Anna Wood, and Rowe, who
spoke vehemently against any relaxation of drug legislation.

For many in this group, still tender with the pain of losing children to
drugs, halting supply and imports of drugs, visible, high-profile policing
and enhanced drug treatment and rehabilitation facilities should be the
only cornerstones of State drug policy.

"It seems to me," Watters said, "that there is a fundamental issue of
difference as to the best way forward. On the one hand, there are those who
believe in treatment leading to a drug-free status and, on the other hand,
those who call for drug law reform and acceptance of the inevitability or
even the normality of illicit drug use ... I believe heroin injection rooms
are a negative response to a problem."

The Premier, the summit's instigator and architect, said Justice James
Wood's graphic account of the cycle of drug dependence, jail, poverty and
crime, had a profound effect on him, as did a visit to a detoxification and
rehabilitation centre. Persuaded by medical opinions that opiate addiction
is a chronic, relapsing neurological condition, Carr said his thinking had
shifted, although he could never shake his abhorrence of the injection of
substances such as heroin.

"I realised that life is inherently a disappointing experience for most
human beings. Some people just can't cope with that and so you have an
epidemic of these substances..."

"I am repelled by heroin. It is the antithesis of the Australia I want to
see. We face a survival challenge and I want us to be a mentally alert,
physically fit nation ... the idea of limping along with hangovers, with
needles hanging out of our veins, is the opposite to the culture that I see
as an acceptable part of life .. But I believe the community assessment of
this debate is very educated .. and now I am prepared to back my judgment
on this."