CARR TELLS: MY DRUG LAW SWITCH

The Premier has conceded that his position on drug law reform has softened
as a result of the Drug Summit which wound up a historic week in NSW
politics yesterday, recommending changes beyond the expectations of even its
more enthusiastic advocates.

Mr Carr acknowledged "it took something to persuade me to a position to say
we will not veto" community-approved, non-government heroin safe injecting
rooms, but he was less enthusiastic about relaxing the State's cannabis-use
laws.

"It's something the Government is going to investigate before we move on
this. That's very much a cautionary note."

Mr Carr said he was surprised ACT-style heroin trials - the most radical
proposal put to the summit - came so close to being accepted (78-67). He
voted against it, although Labor left-wing MPs, including senior ministers,
supported it.

The 71 State Labor MPs were called last night to a Caucus meeting, where Mr
Carr told them to explain to their electorates the summit outcomes and
processes and to detect community attitudes.

He told the meeting that his Government would be cautious in responding to
the summit's 168 resolutions in six weeks' time.

There was an early indication that the Government might meet strong
resistance to drug law reform when the mayor of Fairfield - whose
municipality includes the heroin trouble spot Cabramatta - said his council
would reject development applications for safe injecting rooms And the Prime
Minister expressed concern that NSW would become a magnet for drug addicts
if the proposalsto relax the drug laws radically were adopted.

Mr Carr, in an interview with the Herald, said cracks had begun to open in
his previously hardline suspicion of "miracle" drug strategies on offer at
the summit.

Scientific and law enforcement presentations to the delegates had influenced
him, as had the contribution of the Police Royal Commissioner, Justice James
Wood.

"The view I reached is that life is an inherently disappointing experience
for most human beings," Mr Carr said. "Some people can't cope with that."

Epidemic levels of illicit drugs were now available.

"My view is that this comprises the problem: a propensity of human beings to
compensate for the mediocrity of existence and that it is there, it is
available.

"There will be fluctuations in drug use but, in the meantime, some
supportive policies will ease people through a periodof maximum risk."

That, he said, was his harm minimisation position.

But Mr Carr remains unremitting in his intolerance ofdrugs. "I am repelled
by heroin," he said. "It is the antithesisof the Australia I want."

His Government, he said, would not get ahead of public opinion. "The
community assessment of this is very educated.

"The people of NSW are roughly where I am and they don't want to do anything
which is going to make the situation worse. We'll do nothing which carries
the risk of worsening the position. I've got an abhorrence of any suggestion
of the normalisation of heroin."

Mr Carr spoke of a summit visit to the Langton Clinic in Surry Hills on
Wednesday, where he met a 17-year-old addict whose background bore none of
the stereotypical precursors to drug abuse.

"As people start talking to you about battling drugs, it's very hard to
withdraw compassion.

"It was quite emotionally demanding facing users as individuals, not as a
generic collective. It highlighted in a very individual way what Van Beek
[the inner city drug treatment specialist Dr Ingrid Van Beek] and others
meant [at the summit] by drug dependency being a chronic relapsing
condition."

The "weight of the scientific presentation" to the summit, Mr Carr said,
could not be overlooked in its potency to persuade him and other MPs that
the arguments for alternative policies were worthy of at least serious
consideration by his Government.