GOVT PLANS DRUGS DEBATE

Needle Exchange Staff Cleared Of Wrongdoing

The needle exchange program which sparked a furore over teenage heroin
addiction was cleared of any wrongdoing yesterday as the NSW Government
announced a parliamentary summit on the drugs crisis.

A Health Department report cleared staff at Redfern's Caroline Lane
exchange of supplying needles to a youth who was pictured shooting up in
the gutter.

Initially, authorities feared the boy was aged 11 or 12 and he had received
needles from the exchange.

The report said he was aged 16-17, had not received needles from the
exchange and had never been seen at Caroline Lane before the day he was
photographed.

The pictures caused a sensation with a state election only weeks away and
Health Minister Andrew Refshauge immediately suspended the service pending
the report released yesterday.

Dr Refshauge said the Caroline Lane service would not reopen, instead the
Kirketon Rd Centre in Darlinghurst would use a mobile facility to provide a
needle exchange in the troubled Block area, assisted by the Redfern
Aboriginal Medical Service and the local health authority.

Mr Carr also announced MPs, law enforcement and health officials would
attend an unprecedented five-day parliamentary session to find new ways of
tackling drug addiction if Labor was re-elected on March 27.

Mr Carr admitted current anti-drugs policies were not working and promised
a full-blooded debate where experts like Police Commissioner Peter Ryan
could outline their views without fear of political repercussions.

"No holds barred, just an open debate ... forget name calling, forget point
scoring, forget political argument, just get down to looking at how we deal
with this awful problem," Mr Carr said.

Mr Carr - a long-time opponent of heroin trials and legal shooting
galleries - warned against adopting untested solutions to drug problems.

"I've always said that existing policies aren't working, aren't working as
we'd want them to work, I've always said that," he said.

"The difficulty is that some of the new solutions people enthusiastically
promote could be even more disastrous."

He denied the summit was merely a talkfest, saying "... a democracy is to
some extent a continuing debate".