A HIGH PRICE TO PAY

Drugs are insidious. They wreck lives, friendships, relationships and
careers. And they pay no regard to social status, affecting all walks
of life. Today, few Australians remain unaware of the nation's drug
problem, and too many know a relative, or friend, or colleague who has
fallen victim to the heroin scourge.

Even our leaders have not escaped. The lives of two NSW premiers were
changed by heroin: Bob Carr lost his brother, Greg, and Barrie
Unsworth lost his son, Anthony. In the nation's capital, the then
prime minister Bob Hawke wept as he spoke of his daughter, Rosslyn's
addiction. Two Labor senators, John Button and Brenda Gibbs, share the
tragedy of surviving their children.

The issue has forced itself into our schools, our hospitals, onto the
agenda of our churches and religious leaders, and on Monday will enter
the chambers of the NSW Parliament as Premier Carr's five-day Drug
Summit starts.

In the rarified world of Australian state and federal politics, the
twin issues of drugs and drug law reform have long been unwelcome.
They are seen in the same no-win realm as prisons and criminal law
reform. Being "tough on crime" has become the signature of late-90s
successful politics, appearing "soft on drugs" fatal.

In many western democracies, the campaign trail has sparked a
simplistic rhetoric, a mantra of ever harsher penalties, tighter
controls, and tougher punishments. In the United States, the war
against drugs appears lost, while in the United Kingdom, a Home
Affairs Committee described the heroin problem as the "most serious
peace time threat to our national well-being".

Every year in this country alone, Australians are estimated to spend
$14 billion on illicit drugs. While alcohol and tobacco remain the
most commonly used drugs - accounting for the greatest proportion of
deaths and medical intervention - it is conservatively estimated that
around 113,000 adults have used heroin in the last 12 months. Almost
226,000 hospital episodes in 1996/97 were attributed to drug use, and
around 600 people die of narcotic overdoses every year.

In Australia, HIV infection among drug injectors remains under control
thanks to government-sanctioned programs such as needle exchanges but
experts warn that the threat of an epidemic, as recently seen in
Vancouver, Canada in the wake of a wave of cocaine use, could be
replicated here. And the transmission of potentially fatal liver
diseases, including hepatitis A, B and C, is an on-going concern with
an estimated 15 per cent of users in the community becoming infected
each year and at least 30 per cent of prison addicts.

The NSW Drug Summit was born of such public health and political
time-bombs.

In the weeks preceding the March poll, Premier Carr was faced with
graphic, front-page newspaper photographs of a young teenager
injecting heroin in the back lanes of Redfern. In a bid to control the
damage, he first took a get-tough approach, shutting down the nearby
needle exchange followed by a hasty conciliatory move, creating a
five-day parliamentary talkfest on drugs modelled on the
Constitutional Convention.

The arguments to be heard among the red-leather benches of the NSW
Upper House next week will no doubt mirror the disparate views of the
community: the "just say no", get-tough advocates versus those who
accept that humanity's ancient relationship with mood-altering
substances is here to stay and therefore harm minimisation is the best
approach.

This week, it was the speaker list, drawn up by the premier's
department, which sparked the first wave of anxiety about the summit's
bona fides. The government argues that physical and time constraints
mean a limited speaker list, while critics fear the conservative
nature and views of many participants will necessarily skew outcomes
and recommendations.

"Just as an example, the working group on Drugs and Law Enforcement
contains no academic input apart from a retired economics professor
from Macquarie University and Don Weatherburn, head of the Bureau of
Crime Statistics and Research, who, by his very position as a public
servant, is constrained in his views," said one senior academic
observer yesterday.

"No one who has done active, on-the-ground research on policing and
drug law is there, whereas the members of the group are the police
commissioner, Peter Ryan, the Australian Federal Police's Mick Palmer,
the Police Association's Mark Burgess, Phillip Bradley of the Crime
Commission and Clive Small ... it is heavily dominated by law
enforcement opinions." he said.

For those with firsthand knowledge of the drug problem, the summit is
at least a forum of hope.

Mary-Ellen [not her real name] is 34 years old. A former heroin
addict, she will be one of a handful who will submit her story to the
summit via the Health Maintenance and Treatment Services Working Group
to be chaired by Health Minister, Mr Knowles.

Mary Ellen is representative of a vast but not so visible number of
Australia's drug users. She has never lived on the streets, never
fallen into a life of unemployment, poverty and crime. She had a
normal childhood, finished her schooling, studied at university and
held onto her job as a federal public servant throughout her slide
into addiction and the subsequent climb out.

But her struggle will serve to highlight the fact that people are not
just battling their demons in the back lanes of Kings Cross. They may
show few obvious signs of drug dependence, holding down jobs and
running homes, but still struggling with their addiction.

Mary Ellen describes a conscious decision to experiment with drugs in
her late teens. Nobody forced her hand nor "pushed drugs" onto her.

"In my case ... like a lot of people in their late teens or early 20s
... I just wanted to see what it was like. No-one pushed me. It was
around and I suppose I was intrigued and once I started I kept going.
I have, I guess, one of those addictive personalities," she said.

"I used maybe once a month, maybe once a fortnight, for a few years. I
thought I had it under control and it was like that for long time. I
was going out a lot and I had used needles with speed so it made the
big leap easier. I never really thought I was going to become a
junkie, or get addicted.

"I thought 'I'm intelligent, I'm in control' and I thought I knew what
I was doing. Everyone feels like that in the beginning, no-one goes
into it thinking it would rule your life. For me, it was a choice. I
never smoked dope and I was old enough and educated enough to know
exactly what I was doing."

After about three years, Mary Ellen realised that her heroin use had
become more frequent, she was using every second or third day and
finally, every day. When she found she needed to use before work, it
became apparent she "had to do something about it".

It took five years of a merry-go-round of relapse and detoxification,
including long-term methadone maintenance and Naltrexone rapid
detoxification for the methadone dependence, but Mary Ellen has made
it. She is now clean, is confident of her future and is planning a
child.

"People have this belief that all heroin addicts are living on the
street. I never did anything like that. I used in my own home, I
bought off the same person. Heroin addicts are not just on the streets
... most people probably work with someone who is using. It is much
more widespread than people want to hear ... that horrible addict
monster could be sitting next to them at work."

Mary Ellen believes it important that MPs and the community also know
there are many, many success stories: "But it's just as important that
they realise and understand that everyone is different and what worked
for me might not work for someone else.

"Because without support and without all these different treatment
options, including, perhaps heroin trials for those people who simply
cannot get off and have to use for the rest of their lives, it just
can't work."