RYAN SEEKS BROADER POWERS

The Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, admitting yesterday that large
seizures of drugs were having little impact on their availability or street
price in NSW, asked for new laws to give police broader powers.

He also called for tighter control of the State's methadone program, saying
many clinics were causing "huge social problems".

Mr Ryan told the five-day summit that law enforcement should be part of a
broader government and community approach to tackling the drug problem.

Police had been successful in seizing large quantities of cannabis,
amphetamines and heroin over the past 18 months, including a 500 kilogram
bust on the mid-North Coast last year, but so much was coming into the
country that the record heroin haul had no effect on the purity of the drug
or the cost to users.

"While supply reduction strategies have a deterrent effect on drug
traffickers, because they increase the risk of detection, the reality is
that drug seizures by law enforcement authorities have really had little, if
any, impact on the overall availability and price of drugs at street level,"
he said.

New legislation relating to the importation and trafficking of drugs needed
to be "very robust" and include clear definitions of what was trafficable
quantities.

In addition, police powers to confiscate assets needed to be less rigid if
they were to be effective.

Mr Ryan said reform to the State's methadone scheme should include better
planning and co-ordination when clinics were established and tighter control
over them - particularly those run by the private sector.

Clinics tended to attract drug dealers and lead to districts becoming run
down.

"Drug dealers prey on addicts, businesses close down, there is a degradation
of the social fabric in the area, which begins to fall into dereliction,"
Commissioner Ryan said.

Law enforcement strategies also drew the attention of the director of the
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, Dr Don Weatherburn, who said there was clear
evidence that the efforts of police were encouraging heroin users to give
up.

Those who have been stopped, arrested or imprisoned were more likely to
enter treatment than those who had not had a brush with the law.

But strategies needed to be carefully balanced and police should refrain
from confiscating or destroying injecting equipment, he said.

If that was unacceptable, safe injecting rooms should be considered or
criminal punishment for injecting heroin should be removed.

"I know this will strike some of you has sending the wrong signals," he told
delegates.

"But drug law enforcement also sends the wrong signals when, however
inadvertently, it encourages heroin users to risk disease and death."