HEROIN OVERDOSE DEATHS HIT A RECORD 600

The number of people dying from heroin overdoses has risen to its highest
level in Australia, leaping 10 per cent in just a year to 600 deaths.

In NSW, which accounts for half the nation's deaths from opiate overdoses,
deaths rose by 13 per cent between 1996 and 1997, a National Drug and
Alcohol Research Centre study has found.

The centre's executive director, Professor Wayne Hall, said the analysis of
the 1997 figures showed the nation in the grip of a "contagion" which began
about three years ago, striking vulnerable disadvantaged youth "but with a
lot of middle-class kids caught up in it as well".

"These cycles happen about every 10 years and the lessons of the previous
one are forgotten," Professor Hall said.

"The casualties of the previous epidemic are no longer as visible and
younger people come through thinking they're not going to end up like that.

"As the problems become apparent, younger kids coming behind see what
happens and it slows, but we'll be living with the consequences for some
time."

Professor Hall predicted that the high toll is likely to continue because
people do not tend to die early in drug use. Casualties of the latest
epidemic began three to five years ago and are only now showing in
statistics.

The deaths also reflected a world awash with drugs, as comparatively new
opiate production in the former Soviet Union, Colombia and Mexico joined the
more traditional sources of supply in Asia.

"A lot more people are using it," Professor Hall said. "It's a lot purer
than it was three to four years ago and it makes it easier to overdose if
you have 50 to 60 per cent purity."

Users in this new peak in the cycle appeared to be taking up drug use
younger and were therefore dying younger, Professor Hall said. They were
still mostly male, accounting for four out of five of the deaths, although a
new trend of young women taking up heroin could change that in future
statistics, he said.

Professor Hall warned that this peak in the cycle "throws up a desperate
search for one-stop solutions" which could not work for a problem that had
developed over 30 years.

He called for a State or national drug summit to try to find solutions and
lift the issue out of the party political arena.

"I don't think there is an answer," he said. "There are a variety of things
which could be done to attempt to reduce [the impact]."

Ensuring safer injecting and giving users somewhere to inject away from the
street could contribute, he said.

"The biggest factor requires public money and is a fairly substantial
increase in treatment capacity. You need to pull a lot more heroin users
into treatment. The death rate would improve. We might also end up being
able to reduce the demand for heroin and reduce the scale of the illicit
market."