HEROIN USERS' STARTING-UP AGE PLUMMETS INTO TEENS

A national report into illicit drug use has revealed a continued fall in the
age of first-time heroin users - now on average just 17.5 years old - an
alarming increase in multiple drug use among injecting drug users and a
gradual increase in heroin purity.

The report warned that despite 300kilograms of heroin being seized in
1997-98, the seizures had no real impact on the drug's availability.

In fact, many Victorian police districts reported that heroin availability
had increased.

The Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, yesterday refined his ``zero tolerance''
message on drugs. Announcing $20million in new funding to drug
rehabilitation programs, he said he had compassion for drug users and their
families but contempt for traffickers.

According to the Australian Illicit Drug Report 1997-98, prepared by the
Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and released yesterday, illegal
drugs cost the Australian community an estimated $1.68billion a year. Drug
prevention and treatment efforts, lost productivity, crime, law enforcement
and accidents make up the bulk of the cost.

Other key findings include:

One in five deaths in Australia is drug-related (all drugs).

Cannabis-related offences accounted for 76.9per cent of all illicit drug
offences nation-wide in 1997-98.

10.5per cent more heroin was picked up at the Victorian border in 1997-98.

A disturbing trend for Sydney cocaine users to inject it.

Domestic production of cannabis is rising.

Amphetamine production has increased substantially in Queensland and NSW.

Cannabis offences in Victoria dropped by 53.1per cent in the two years to
1997-98, to 9034.

The report, launched in Melbourne by the Minister for Justice and Customs,
Senator Amanda Vanstone, and Victoria's chief police commissioner, Mr Neil
Comrie, found the amount of heroin and cocaine seized in Australia jumped by
more than 26per cent in 1997-98, while the number of amphetamine/ecstasy
seizures jumped 30per cent to 4544 (excluding South Australia).

Senator Vanstone said she was pleased that in the first seven months of
1998-99 authorities had captured 565kilograms of heroin and 274kilograms of
cocaine, a substantial increase on recent years.

Senator Vanstone strongly defended the Government's approach to drug issues
and detection, saying it had the balance ``fairly right''.

Mr Comrie said it was a ``terrible tragedy'' that the average age of
first-time heroin users had fallen to 17.5.

``It's a sign of a problem that we are, I think, needing to come to grips
with very urgently,'' he said.

Mr Comrie also repeated his call for a small-scale heroin trial for
long-term heroin addicts. ``I obviously have a philosophical disagreement
with the Federal Government's position on this,'' he said.

The community had nothing to lose by conducting a small, highly managed and
scientifically sound heroin trial involving about a dozen long-term addicts,
he said.

``The reality is, that if we don't try something like that, these are the
people who are going to add to the overdose statistics,'' he said.

``I think we have got to do everything we can to intervene into the cycle of
drug abuse as early as we can.''

But Senator Vanstone strongly repeated the Federal Government's opposition
to such trials. ``The Commonwealth Government has made its decision.''

Drug experts said yesterday they were concerned that the age of first-time
heroin users was falling. The age was 26 in 1996.

Mr David Crosbie, the chief executive officer of the Alcohol and Other Drugs
Council of Australia, said many of today's fatal overdose victims were
long-term users aged in their early 30s, he said.

``If the patterns repeat themselves in 10 years ... we are going to have
even more people dying of overdoses.''