SHOOTING GALLERY, HEROIN TRIAL BOOST

Shaw Suports Working Group's Resolution

Controversial proposals to legalise shooting galleries and conduct heroin
trials have been given a major boost at the NSW drug summit in Sydney.

State Attorney-General Jeff Shaw agreed to a preliminary resolution carried
late Tuesday night, by a working group he chaired, to trial safe injecting
rooms and the legal prescription of heroin.

And paramedic Jim Porter yesterday told delegates the Government was
putting the lives of ambulance workers at risk by refusing to make shooting
galleries legal.

Drug summit delegates came face to face with the casualties of drug
addiction yesterday during site visits to rehabilitation centres around
Sydney.

During one visit to the drug hot spot of Cabramatta, in Sydney's
south-west, a heroin user collapsed in front of delegates and had to be
treated by a paramedic.

The suggestion by delegates, including National Drug and Alcohol Research
Council director Professor Wayne Hall and Law Society President Margaret
Hole, to look at drug reforms comes in the face of opposition by Premier
Bob Carr and Prime Minister John Howard.

Mr Carr has opposed safe injecting rooms, a recommendation made by Justice
James Wood after he investigated police corruption.

But Mr Porter said the Government was not fulfilling its duties under
occupational health and safety laws.

The closing down of so-called shooting galleries at Kings Cross sex shops
on an order from police during the state election campaign had made
ambulance officers' jobs more dangerous, by making them more vulnerable to
being accidentally jabbed by HIV or Hepatitis C-infected needles, he said.

Mr Porter described the plight of walking into ``dilapidated houses with no
electricity, huge amounts of uncapped needles, walking up and down stairs
with treads missing, no floorboards''.

His call followed a resolution from a working party chaired by Mr Shaw
considering ways of breaking the drugs and crime cycle.

The working party found the Health Department should trial ``appropriately
supervised self-administration facilities'' and the prescription of heroin.

On other issues, the working party said police should be allowed to caution
offenders carrying small amounts of cannabis for personal use.

The working party said jail penalties for possessing and cultivating
cannabis, and for having equipment to take the drug, should be removed.

The resolutions were opposed by two senior Liberal delegates - Opposition
spokesman on legal affairs Chris Hartcher and treasury spokesman Peter Debnam.

Labor's Member for Bathurst Gerard Martin expressed reservations about the
resolution for safe injecting rooms and magistrate Craig Thompson opposed
the removal of jail terms for cannabis offences.

The resolutions must now be voted on by a special resolutions group, which
will make recommendations to the Government on its drug policy at the end
of the summit.