BACK OFF DRUG ADDICTS, LAW SOCIETY PRESIDENT URGES

The use of marijuana should not be a criminal offence and a trial of legal
heroin use should go ahead, the State's leading law body has urged.

The new president of the NSW Law Society, Ms Margaret Hole, said addiction
was a social, not criminal, problem and that the legal profession must be
brave and support major reforms.

Addressing a dinner hosted by the society at Parliament House to launch the
start of the legal year, Ms Hole urged her colleagues to devise
compassionate and effective ways of dealing with drug addiction.

"For the law society, the first constructive step is to decriminalise the
personal use of marijuana," she said. "The second positive step this year is
to support a trial, as proposed in the ACT - and unfortunately knocked back
at the last moment - of legal heroin use."

Ms Hole's comments follow the weekend controversy which saw a needle
exchange program abandoned after a young boy was shown injecting heroin.

She said addiction was a medical disease, and that addicts needed treatment,
not punishment. Another area of concern to be addressed by legal circles was
youth and crime.

"It is the duty of lawyers to speak up for the next generation," said Ms
Hole. Many children were neglected and suffered violence.

"This shameful situation belies impressions that children are chiefly
perpetrators of crime, who have little or no regard for law and order, and
who disregard the rights of anyone else."

Ms Hole announced that the society would launch a children's legal services
committee to guide the profession on youth issues, as well as advising on
legislative changes.

The NSW Chief Justice, Jim Spigelman, delivered the keynote speech, urged
lawyers to resist being motivated by self-interest.

"We must as a profession resist what appears to be the dominant perspective
in our society that people who put duty and service to the public ahead of
self-interest are eccentric," he said. "The law is not simply a job or a
business focused solely on maximising the income of its members.

"The profession of the law has a strong ethical dimension, and seeks to
attain the objectives of justice, truth and fairness, not simply the
promotion of the self-interest of members of the profession or their
clients."