NEEDLE SCHEME UNDER SCRUTINY AFTER PHOTO SPARKS OUTCRY

Within hours of this photograph appearing in a Sunday tabloid, the operation
of Australia's most advanced needle-exchange program was under scrutiny and
a chief law body was calling for more lenient penalties for heroin addicts.

The image of an adult injecting heroin into the arm of a child prompted
anger. That the syringe was obtained from a New South Wales Health
Department worker as part of a government program evoked outrage.

Yesterday, Sydney's talk-back radio kings, John Laws and Alan Jones, were
deluged with hundreds of calls from people giving their opinions on the
photograph and the scourge of heroin. Television news directors led their
bulletins with stories focusing on the prompt action of the NSW Health
Minister, Dr Andrew Refshauge, to suspend one outlet of his Government's
safe needle scheme and order a review of the remaining 300.

The picture, which ran on the front page of the Fairfax-owned Sun-Herald,
which has a readership of more than 1.5 million people, was published under
the headline: "We give kids like this heroin kits instead of help. Now the
health minister admits ..." (and then, in huge letters), "IT'S WRONG".

In the report, the boy was described as being aged 12 or 13 (it emerged
yesterday that he is 16). He was using a free "injection kit", which
contains a swab, a needle, a syringe and a spoon, given to him under the
clean needle program, which aims to reduce the spread of HIV and other
infectious diseases among intravenous drug users.

The boy was photographed in Caroline Lane, Redfern, an inner-Sydney suburb
notorious for its high proportion of Aboriginal residents who are addicted
to heroin. Sydney's other heroin-riddled suburb is Cabramatta, where most of
the addicts are Vietnamese and Lebanese.

Cynics might say that Dr Refshauge reacted promptly to the photograph and
Sun-Herald article because the boy is white.

According to the tabloid, Dr Refshauge was "greatly disturbed" by the
photograph. But he could not have been particularly surprised by it, because
Caroline Lane, Redfern, is in his electorate.

Yesterday, he said the needle-exchange program would not be scrapped,
because it played an important role in protecting the health of people who
might otherwise share needles, but that it needed "a review".

Under his plans, "everyone under the age of 18 will be required to attend
counselling and the option of taking up drug treatment".

The editor of the Sun-Herald, Mr Alan Revell, said he was surprised by Dr
Refshauge's reaction. "It wasn't the reaction we expected or ... the
reaction that was required," he said. "Our feeling ... was that workers
should do more than just hand out drug-taking paraphernalia."

Last night, the New South Wales Law Society joined the debate, urging legal
powerbrokers to consider a heroin usage trial and the decriminalisation of
marijuana for personal use.

Lawyers and politicians must be brave during the drug debate and remove some
penalties for addicts, the society's president, Ms Margaret Hole, said. Drug
addiction was a medical condition and should be treated as such, she said.

But amid all the public discussion prompted by the photograph was a mother's
desperate plea.

"I'm worried about he's going to kill himself. He's overdosed once," the
boy's mother told Channel 9 last night. "It's such an easy drug to get ...
They just seem to be able to get on it so easy ... I can't do anything to
get him into rehab or anything because he doesn't have to."

As her son is 16, the western suburbs mother has no legal right to force him
into rehabilitation.

Hers is a plight shared by families across the nation.

Sydney's tabloid papers and talk-back radio programs are often credited with
forcing the hands of state and federal governments on issues of law reform.
The escalating heroin problem will certainly be on the agenda of the Carr
Labor Government and the coalition Opposition for the election on 27 March.