HEROIN BOOT CAMP PLAN WINS BACKING

DRUG experts yesterday gave cautious support to Peter Beattie's plan for
"boot camps" for heroin addicts, provided they taught addicts how to cope
and were not just a substitute for prison.

The Queensland Labor Premier's plan - hatched after he rejected heroin
trials at last week's State and territory leaders' meeting on drugs - also
gained support from West Australian Liberal Premier Richard Court, who said
yesterday the idea was "certainly worth a try".

Mr Beattie said the camps would force addicts to undergo strict disciplinary
programs and rehabilitation, but a spokesman said no further details were
available.

Mr Court, who has refused support for a heroin trial, said heroin-dependent
offenders needed specific rehabilitation programs that were not available in
regular prisons to help them beat the habit.

"What we're looking at is a work camp where there is a very high level of
discipline, there is hard, physical work that needs to be done, but it is
also combined with education programs," he told ABC radio.

"Sometimes you have got to be cruel to be kind, as they say, and I think if
people have committed serious offences . . . and we've got the opportunity
to try and genuinely rehabilitate them, it is worth a try."

The national director of the Drug Arm organisation, Dennis Young, said the
camps could be "quite successful" if they concentrated on treatment and
teaching addicts how to cope with life without drugs. "Treatment and
diversion programs do work and are effective and they're usually a lot
cheaper than prisons," he said.

"But you wouldn't want to start up a whole military system and make it like
a boot camp."

Australian Medical Association federal president David Brand said he
supported the proposal in principle, but needed more details.

"We certainly need to look at proper support programs for people that have
been involved in drug use," he said.

"If all we do is chuck them in jail and don't put any rehabilitation in
place it's going to be totally useless."

However, a note of caution was sounded by the director of the University of
Queensland's Alcohol and Drug Research and Education Centre, Ann Roche.

"The idea of just plucking somebody off the street willy-nilly and just
shipping them out bush probably wouldn't have great chances of success," Dr
Roche said.

"The persons themselves need to be at a stage where they're ready to start
making some really substantial changes in their lives, or you need to have
very skilled therapists who can help people to get to that point."