ALL THAT'S NEEDED NOW ARE SOME POKIES

THE T-Room at Sydney's Wayside Chapel has opened up new horizons for
the Uniting Church to practise its Christian mission. No doubt it will
have to add other remedies for other social ills.

May I suggest that they add half a dozen poker machine: so gambling
addicts can be catered for together with a bar with full alcohol
services for those who have an alcohol addiction.

I am sure that one or two snorting tables would not go amiss for these
who need to have cocaine supplements.

The Uniting Church will no doubt realise the needs of these other
forms of addictions are just as compelling.

The Uniting Church's interpretation of Christ's message is puzzling.
Nowhere can I find that Christ supported or condoned any activity that
was self-destructive and socially irresponsible. Christ never asked us
to be stupid with our compassion, but that is how the Uniting Church
is behaving.

I have had a long and close relationship with the Uniting Church. I
feel the wisdom behind this latest exhibition of social manipulation
is very pretentious and the concept, totally naive. I will be
thinking, as I am sure many other people are thinking, that the
Uniting Church is not worth supporting anymore.

MAC WYLLIE
Mount Drulit, NSW

THE involvement of the Church in heroin trials is understandable -
they both embrace an escape from reality.

Dr IAN MACKECHNIE
Rosanna, Vic

WHILE John Howard and the Salvation Army keep their heads in the sand
others are out there saving lives.

The safe injecting T-Room is civil disobedience at its
best.

BEN OQUIST
Hughes, ACT

IF a patron of a T-Room having been assisted and encouraged to inject
himself with heroin, leaves the premises on a "high" and commits a
crime, can the victim sue the providers of the facility?

Few drug addicts have any money, but most churches have money and
property that could be used to compensate the victims of addicts they
aid and abet. It would give new meaning to "Sell all that you have and
give to the poor".

MARISE LAYBUTT,
Mossman, NSW

THE Church leaders involved in the T-Room show great leadership and
their actions will hopefully go down in Church history as evidence of
the Church continuing to be relevant in the 21st century. Almost makes
me want to start going back.

BRONWYN BARNARD,
Kaleen, ACT

HOW ironic, in the newly opened illegal shooting gallery at the
Wayside Chapel a drug user is not allowed to smoke a legal substance,
tobacco, but is allowed to inject an illegal substance, heroin. Have
we lost our senses?

ANNE WALKER
Epping, NSW

SHAME on these drug addicts. Why can't they understand that the
Government wants them to abstain - that is, go "cold turkey" - and if
they get those absolutely terrifying and medically dangerous symptoms,
well then it's their own fault isn't it?

If they must take something, why can't they just join hundreds of
thousands of fellow Australians and become alcoholics? They will have
access to reasonably priced casks of riesling, which is bacteria and
virus free and rarely acutely lethal.

And if they feel the equivalent of cold turkey coming on - delirium
tremens or "the horrors" - then treatment is easy. Just take another
caskful. Oh that our governments could experience the terrors of cold
turkey.

PATRICK PELHAM
Maylands, SA

ALTHOUGH Mr Howard's approach to the drug problem is commendable I am
afraid it is too late to avert the endemic spread at narcotic
addiction which over the past 30 years has increased by geometric
progression and that means that it may remain with us
indefinitely.

However, it is good that Mr Howard has declined to sanction the free
supply of heroin to addicts. Studies in England, Sweden and Holland
show that heroin clinics are ineffective in containing the spread of
addiction.

It is important to note that in a recent Swiss heroin trial 30 per
cent of addicts dropped out after one year and only 7 per cent decided
to become drug-free after three years. We should follow the example of
Sweden, which after finding pharmacological treatments ineffective,
decided to rehabilitate addicts in drug-free centres and the results
are very encouraging.

Anyone who has worked in the field of rebabilitation of drug addiction
is aware that drug addicts when afflicted with complications of their
dependence will seek help for them but they are seldom prepared to
give up their special form of enjoyment.

All approaches to combat the drug problem are doomed to fall unless
they are directed toward: reducing peoples desires for chemical
comforts. As long as they want them. they will obtain then, by hook or
by crook and when the need is great, price becomes no object. It is
not an exaggeration that prevention of drug abuse will succeed only by
making a drug-free life more appealing than life under the influence
of drugs.

Dr JAN W. GABRYNOWICZ
Leabrook, SA