NSW TO BE MAGNET FOR JUNKIES, PM FEARS

NSW could become a "magnet" for junkies and drug dealers if drug law reform
proposal were adopted, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday.

The State Government's historic five-day Drug Summit closed yesterday with
delegates recommending the consideration of safe injecting rooms and
relaxed cannabis laws.

Drug law reform advocates are already calling for medically supervised
injecting rooms to be tested in at least five locations across the State
including Kings Cross, Redfern and Cabramatta.

But a skeptical Prime Minister said participants in the Drug Summit and the
State Government were "seeing a change as an end in itself".

"You have to keep asking yourself, do all of these things encourage addicts
to give up and save lives; and I'm not convinced that they will," Mr Howard
said.

"What is the purpose of this whole debate? The purpose of the whole debate
is to reduce addiction and save lives and those two things are interrelated
. . . and also to eliminate the knock-on consequences and that is the
robbery and violence done to other people."

Mr Howard said liberalised marijuana laws turned The Netherlands into the
drug capital of Europe.

In closing the Summit yesterday, Premier Bob Carr said the drug problem was
"a matter that has to be faced up to".

"If there are activities taking place in the parks and in the back lanes
that the community wants to deal with in a better fashion, then we'll
explore the option you've put to us for dealing with it in a better
fashion," he said.

Mr Carr said Government was not going soft on drugs by considering the
proposals and said his support for the shooting gallery proposal was the
hardest decision he made at the summit.

"I will not accept the normalisation of heroin in our society," he said.

"I say to people who live in hope that the stigma related to heroin use
will be removed that we cannot do that."

Mr Carr said no proposal in the summit's 41-page communique would be
adopted unless it could be shown it would make life easier for families
confronting the drugs problem.