FROM SYRUP TO SCOURGE IN 46 YEARS

Jim Snow used to mix up heroin syrup in bulk at a little pharmacy in
St Arnaud in central Victoria. Orange flavored it was. Customers would
come in, prescription in hand, and Jim would give out what was then
thought an excellent treatment for a dry cough.

He knew some of his customers were addicted - ``they were a bit more
anxious than the others'' - but there were few problems. Nobody broke
into the pharmacy for drugs, and the heroin syrup was kept in a little
wooden cupboard with an ordinary key.

He's not sure whether it's true, but Mr Snow, later a federal Labor MP
for 13 years, is credited in at least one book to be the last
pharmacist to legally dispense heroin in this country. It was 15
September 1953.

At the time, he thought banning heroin was a good thing. The
Commonwealth prohibited all importation and manufacture of heroin in
June 1953, following international eyebrow-raising, particularly from
the United States, at Australia's high consumption of heroin.

Through demonisation, then glamorisation, heroin has lost its history.
It is barely recalled now that the Australian medical profession and
the states were against prohibition, as was the then Commonwealth
Director-General of Health, all of whom believed medical prescription
was working well, even for known addicts.

Doctors, in particular, wanted to keep using heroin not just for
coughs, but for childbirth pain and cancer treatment.

In 1953, there were reportedly no deaths from heroin overdoses in
Australia. Last year, heroin overdoses cost about 600 lives.

``I changed my mind within about five years when they (addicts)
started robbing the pharmacies and I realised that, just with the old
prohibition of alcohol, those of us who thought prohibition would stop
people had made a mistake,'' says Mr Snow, now 65.

It was that mistake, according to Mr Snow, that led Australia to give
up its autonomy on drugs to US-dominated international treaties.

He has watched the crime, the corruption and the spiralling cost of
law enforcement with dismay. As the Labor member for Eden-Monaro in
NSW until 1996, Mr Snow worked to reform drug laws.

He denies his views are in any way radical. ``My view is a
conservative view, it's going back to what was before.''

In 1992, Mr Snow moved in the House of Representatives that the ``sale
of drugs of addiction such as heroin and other opiates, cocaine and
amphetamines (should be) by prescription''. The debate was adjourned
after 20 minutes.

Mr Snow argues that doctors and pharmacists should be trained and
registered to prescribe heroin. ``What we're going to have to face up
to is that there is a recreational use (of heroin) where there is no
great danger except when the dosage is changed. If you're getting it
from pharmacies, from heroin grown in Tasmania or somewhere, then you
know that it's proper heroin and it's always the same strength.''

Mr Snow was once thought an extremist on the issue, his remedy
outrageous and politically naive. Now, he thinks he's moving back into
the mainstream, back where he was 40 years ago.

The Australian Parliamentary Group for Drug Reform, made up of present
and former parliamentarians, now has 100 members, including Sir Rupert
Hamer, Sir John Gorton, Meg Lees and Queensland Labor Senator Brenda
Gibbs, whose 28-year-old son died of a heroin overdose in 1996.

Political change will come, says Mr Snow. ``(John) Howard's strategy
is a disaster. When he is about 80, he may realise it.''