CARR HITS AT UNI GUIDE ON HEROIN

SYDNEY: NSW Premier Bob Carr joined anti-drugs campaigners yesterday
in attacking a Sydney university handbook which gives students
instructions on how to inject heroin.

"I think it's appalling and I can't belive that a university is
producing or distributing such a document," Mr Carr said.

He said the orientation handbook, distributed by the student
association at the University of Technology, Sydney, contradicted the
Government's no-tolerance position on drugs.

"Let's reinforce the message again, that mucking around with heroin is
a way of killing yourself," Mr Carr said. "It shows no respect for the
community, no respect for your own body if you inject this addictive
poison into your veins.

"I can't believe it, it is the very [antithesis] of the message we
want the whole community to understand and communicate and that is
that heroin has no place in a healthy life."

The handbook, which also tells students how much they can expect to
pay for heroin, was distributed to 5000 students last month, giving
five pages of step-by-step instructions on injecting heroin.

Mr Carr said he had not seen the material but had been alerted after
media reports referred to the booklet as a "do-it-yourself guide to
drug abuse".

The Salvation Army has called for the handbook to be pulped and warned
it encouraged teenagers to experiment with intravenous drugs.

"Its explicit and detailed instructions show you how to find a vein,
put the needle in, and how to make sure you've found a vein," a
coordinator of drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs for the
Salvation Army, Gerard Byrne, said.

"I'm sure if you picked it up and read it you could follow the
instructions.

"We feel it's a little bit misguided, whilst it may have come out in
the guise of harm minimisation, we feel displaying information such as
that for general circulation is a misguided approach."

The student association told the Sun-Herald newspaper the guide did
not promote drug use and was aimed at stopping students contracting
diseases such as HIV.

The Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation said it was a positive move
for students to be shown the safe procedure of using intravenous drugs.

But Mr Byrne said the information contained in the booklet should only
be made available on a need or request basis. "We'd like to see that
in the future, some thought is given to where this information is
going to end up."