SHOT IN THE ARM FOR DRUG DEBATE

NICK'S hypodermic, swab, tourniquet and foil of heroin are neatly laid out
in preparation for his hit. He is about to inject, but first he reaches for
a calming cigarette.

Big mistake: the nurse is on him immediately. "You can't smoke in here,"
she says sternly, pointing to the rules posted on the wall. Nick guiltily
shoves the pack back in his pocket and gets on with shooting up.

Such are the bizarre contradictions that arise when the heroin culture
collides with church rules.

The man we are calling Nick was one of half a dozen volunteers who trialled
the so-called Tolerance Room, or T-Room, at a "practice run" last Thursday.

Located in the Wayside Chapel in Sydney's Kings Cross, the T-Room aims to
be a safe place for long-term injecting drug addicts to shoot up, using
clean equipment, under the eye of a trained nurse.

The idea is that while the users will get high, at least they won't die.

Aiding and abetting the administration of a prohibited substance carries a
maximum penalty of a $2200 fine and/or two years' jail.

Everyone connected with the trial, including the chapel's Reverend Ray
Richmond could be arrested. He says the members of the T-Room group are
braced for anything.

"They are all going to come at us," he says. "We're going to be accused of
all sorts of nefarious, left-wing, pinkish tendencies.

"But if we are closed down, if our energies and our suggestions are not
taken up, the experiment will be continued in one form or another. We are
very determined to get evidence-based policies relative to drug use."

Among the others watching as Nick and some fellow addicts injected were
Tony Trimingham, the founder of Family Drug Support, his fellow director
Ella Inta and social worker Joey Nipperess.

Trimingham, whose son Damien died of a heroin overdose two years ago, says
they were driven to their act of defiance after years of frustration.

"I think it is intolerable that since my son died more than 1600 people
have died in Australia and that there is no strategy to save their lives,"
he says.

"It is only this action of civil disobedience from the community that will
bring results. It isn't meant to cause anyone any damage or promote drug
use. It is a symbolic act."

The group behind the T-Room first got together when Trimingham and Richmond
called an informal meeting of like-minded people last September to thrash
out ideas.

The most viable option seemed to be to open an injecting room. This had
been thoroughly researched by the NSW Select Joint Committee into Safe
Injecting Rooms, which was formed in 1997 after the Wood royal commission
recommended such rooms be trialled. When the proposed trial was eventually
voted down, in March 1998, it was a bitter disappointment to drug law
reform advocates. And there were more to come.

In December 1998 the NSW Government stopped distributing wide-bore syringes
through its needle exchanges, saying they were being used to inject
methadone syrup.

At the premiers conference in April, the Federal Government committed a
further $220 million to be spent on prevention, detoxification and
rehabilitation, but controversial options such as legalised injecting rooms
and a prescription heroin trial were not even discussed.

Meanwhile, several attempts to set up legal injecting rooms in Victoria and
the ACT failed.

The final straw came in March when, two weeks before the NSW election and
after turning a blind eye for a decade police raided and closed down three
shooting galleries in Kings Cross strip clubs.

Trimingham estimates that those strip clubs, which for between $5 and $10
provided junkies with a cubicle, a clean needle and someone to call an
ambulance if they collapsed, saved 25 lives each per week, based on the
number of overdoses that occurred in the clubs where people were revived.

Drug reform campaigner Alex Wodak fears their closure may cause many more
deaths than that, warning: "The combination of the closures of the
facilities, the current cocaine epidemic and the ban on wide-bore syringe
availability have set up all the conditions you need for a HIV epidemic."

In January, the T-Room group decided to open its own injecting room in the
hope they would force the NSW Health Department to step in and run a proper
trial itself.

Richmond was reluctant to host the trial, fearing it would create the
untrue perception the Wayside Chapel was only available to injecting drug
users. But, not surprisingly, finding alternative accommodation proved
difficult.

Richmond says they were also careful to pay for all the necessary
equipment, such as syringes and swabs, rather than "sneak it out the back
door of government-funded places".

The T-Room budget is around $20,000, which would cover set-up costs and the
current four to six-week demonstration, plus a second demonstration if
necessary. As of last week, the group had raised $5200, enough to keep the
T-Room open for just a few days.