AT WAR OVER DRUGS

Most have lost children to drugs, but this does not give them a common
cause. In fact, as these parents prepare for next week's drug summit,
the battle lines are being dug even deeper. DEBORAH SNOW reports.

TO AN outsider there seems so much to unite them. They are the
battle-scarred veterans of the "war" against illicit drugs, the
parents who've been through the unutterable pain of losing a child to
addiction, or drug-related death. A club, one of them says, that
"you'd never want to join". Having endured it, you ask yourself, how
could they not have a common cause?

Yet with the five-day NSW drug summit starting next Monday, it's
becoming apparent that shared adversity, even of the most extreme
kind, does not necessarily make for shared purpose.

Last week's establishment of a trial injecting room at the Wayside
Chapel in Sydney's Kings Cross exposes a rift in parental lobby groups
as deep as that running through the political and legal establishment.
The split is poised to come to a head at the summit where a handful of
small but politically influential and vocal parent organisations are
lining up against a man who takes a very different view of the way
ahead.

His name is Tony Trimingham. His story is tragic, as are all the tales
these parents have to tell. His son, Damien, was 23 when he died from
a heroin overdose. Like many addicts, Damien had gone through periods
of struggling to free himself from the drug. At times he would
succeed. Then depression and unemployment would get the upper hand,
and Damien would take a train from the Blue Mountains to the city to
score.

On what was to be his last such journey, he headed for town after a
row with his girlfriend. Withdrawing the last of his funds from an
ATM, Damien procured his hit and went into the darkened grounds of the
disused St Mary's Hospital in Paddington to inject in solitude. By the
time security guards found him he had collapsed. An ambulance arrived
too late. It took police three days to notify Tony Trimingham of his
son's death.

Trimingham believes that if safe injecting rooms had been available in
the city, a place for heroin users to shoot up under medical
supervision, then his son might not have died. "They would be like
brothels," he says. "You go in discreetly, use them and then leave.
There's far less risk involved in using a brothel than in picking
someone up off the streets."

Trimingham's searing experience has made him a leading advocate of the
approach to illicit drugs known as "harm minimisation". Its hallmarks
are safe injecting rooms, a belief in the need for trials of legally
prescribed heroin, support for methadone programs, and needle exchanges.

It's an approach also favoured by a large number of frontline drug
workers who believe that if you can support drug-dependent people
through the worst of their addiction, then eventually they will come
out the other side. Even the ones who can't be "reclaimed", says
Trimingham, "don't deserve to be condemned to death".

It's a stand which takes heavy drug use to be primarily a social and
health issue, rather than a law enforcement problem.

Yet most of parent representatives who will be at Bob Carr's summit
are lining up behind a radically opposing view. They include Angela
Wood from Drug Watch Australia, whose daughter Anna died after taking
ecstasy in 1995, sparking national uproar; rock legend Normie Rowe,
who's been publicly campaigning for tougher drugs action since
discovering the heroin addiction of his teenage daughter; Margaret
McKay, head of a North Coast organisation called Keep Our Kids Alive,
who lost her son David to a methadone overdose; Judy Gibson, wife of
football coach Jack, who lost a son, Luke, to heroin at the age of 25;
and Jill Pearman, also from Drug Watch Australia, the only one of this
group who has been spared personal trauma.

While there are differing emphases among the group, all broadly stand
under the "zero tolerance" umbrella espoused by the Prime Minister,
John Howard. They want money spent on community and school education,
on treatment, on cracking down hard on drugs supply. Their catchcry is
"prevention", not tolerance. Politically, they tend towards
conservatism. For them, safe injecting rooms are an anathema, sending
the wrong signals to their children and marking the first step along a
road they believe will lead to legalisation.

Tony Trimingham has become, for some of them, the voice of the
enemy.

Angela Wood's resistance to the philosophy of safe drug use has been
hardened by the fact that her daughter died after taking a single MDMA
tablet at an all-night dance party. These days, she spends most of her
time giving talks on a voluntary basis to adolescents in schools. She
says: "I can never talk about 'safe use'. I don't talk about harm
minimisation. The truth with drugs is that they are going to hurt you.
If you use a mind altering drugs on a regular basis they are hurting
you."

Of Tony Trimingham, she says: "He'll never convert me and I'll never
convert him. To me heroin has overtaken the whole debate; heroin has
stolen the spotlight. It's such a small amount compared to the damage
kids are doing themselves with other substances."

Wood dismisses the injecting room at the Wayside Chapel, set up in
defiance of the law, as "divisive", a line backed by virtually all the
other parents going to the summit.

Says Normie Rowe: "I don't understand how if you lost a child you are
prepared to keep other kids on drugs until they die. There is only one way
with these sorts of drugs and that's abstinence. These people cannot be
using their commonsense. You wouldn't give a recovering alcoholic a bottle
of scotch a day. It's a publicity stunt, a way of putting their point of
view way ahead of anything else. If the Government had the guts, they would
send the police in to shut it down. I would like to ask these people what
their ulterior motive is."

Dark hints about "ulterior motives" are symptomatic of the degree to
which fear and suspicion galvanise some in the anti-harm minimisation
camp. Rowe got into hot water last year as MC of a drugs seminar
organised by the Federal Sports Minister, Jackie Kelly.

Enraged by some of the data supplied by the National Drug and Alcohol
Research Centre (NDARC), which he considers a captive of the harm
minimisation lobby, Rowe hurled the report across the stage and
queried whether the organisation mightn't be doing the work of
international drug barons.

UNSURPRISINGLY NDARC, which is largely Commonwealth-funded, responded
with legal threats. Rowe has since soft-pedalled this line. More
recently, however, NDARC has been dogged by untrue rumours circulating
among some of the more conservative parent groups that it receives
funds from the US-based George Soros Foundation, which favours drug
law reform.

Rowe and others get frustrated by what they see as NDARC's downplaying
of the scale of the drug problem. But as one exasperated health
professional says: "These people are experts on parent suffering. They
are not experts on drug use. Because of the tragedies they have
suffered they are made into instant experts by the media. But often
they are poorly informed."

Paul Dillon, of NDARC, argues that "it's still a very small proportion
of people who are going to use heroin no matter how available it
becomes". He says that last year's 1998 Australian household survey of
people 14 years and up shows only 2 per cent of the population had
ever tried heroin. "If this drug summit can do anything, I would like
to see it ensure that the people who talk to the media about drugs are
given accurate information. We all need to give the same message."

Yet the chances for achieving that sort of unanimity appear remote.
Both sides are jockeying to form alliances, worried that the opposing
viewpoint will predominate at the summit. So far, all members of State
Parliament are on the invitation list, plus another 80 or so delegates
across the spectrum of health services, the judicial system and the
community. An unspecified number of associate delegates may also be
included.

Arguments about who has or has not been invited, who will speak and
who will sit on the all-important working groups are already dogging
the lead-up to the summit.

Trimingham's initial reaction to the line-up was that he would be
drowned out by the opposing parent voices. "When I first saw the list,
my first reaction was to say I wouldn't go, and that we would protest
outside."

Rather than a boycott, though, he decided to press for some other
members of his parent-based organisation, Family Drug Support, to join
the summit as associate delegates. He's also formed an alliance with
like-minded health groups (including the Royal Australasian College of
Physicians) to caucus at the week-long meeting summit under the banner
of a newly formed Coalition for Constructive Drug Action.

A spokesman for the physicians' college, Craig Patterson, confirms the
new alliance, saying: "We've got to look at what works and what
doesn't. We should be looking at things like heroin trials as a
research issue, not a moral issue."

Trimingham also believes that with 1,800 members, his group dwarfs the
others, which he claims would be lucky to boast more than 100 or so
members between them.

This is strongly denied. While Angela Wood admits that the
organisation she heads, Drug Watch Australia, is "not a
membership-based organisation", she says she comes into contact with
hundreds of parents who urge her to keep up the work she's doing.
Others like Margaret McKay and Judy Gibson claim their networks run
into the thousands.

ASKING who does speak for the parents of Australia is a raw and
divisive issue. Dr Andrew Byrne, an inner-city GP who has treated many
addicts and their families, backs Trimingham's claim, saying: "Tony
speaks for the vast majority of parents of addicts, in my experience.
Of course, all parents would like their kids to abstain and so on. But
we have to face up to realities. Many people, including myself, start
out with a rather narrow philosophy of just cracking down on it. But
you come to realise that that's unrealistic."

Yet the other parent summiteers feel it is they who are representing the
"silent majority". Says Margaret McKay: "I don't know one parent who
wouldn't want their kids to grow up drug-free. Most people don't want drugs,
have no power and don't know what to do."

She is banding together with the Australian Parent Movement to
organise a mass protest on June 26, marking International Drug Free
Day. Trimingham still believes that one of the greatest obstacles to
community acceptance of alternate strategies is that so many people
believe "it" can never happen to them.

A recent analysis of calls coming in to his 24-hour hotline (which is
largely funded by government grants) found nearly half related to kids
still living at home with their parents. The second highest origin of
calls, after the outer western suburbs, was Sydney's largely
privileged North Shore.

When questioned, Angela Wood, Normie Rowe, Jill Pearman and Margaret
McKay all state they would find it extremely difficult to work with
Trimingham. McKay's reaction was typical: "I would not work with
someone who is blatantly flouting the law."

Yet Trimingham states he's still hoping they can bury their
differences in at least some areas. "Just because we favour safe
injecting rooms and heroin trials doesn't mean we are not also in
favour of education, rehabilitation, and prevention."

Trying to build bridges between these disparate, impassioned voices
will be the hardest task the summit has ahead of it.