CAUTIOUS NOD FOR VOLUNTARY DRUG TESTS

Civil liberty and legal groups yesterday greeted with caution a
research program that asks people charged with criminal offences to
supply urine samples and details of their drug use.

The program, called Drug Use Monitoring in Australia, is being
coordinated by the Australian Institute of Criminology and is set to
start in three states this month.

The police forces of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia
have agreed to take part in the three-year study which will attempt to
quantify the link between illicit drug use and crime.

Victoria Police was considering introducing the program, The Age
revealed yesterday, but would monitor the other pilot programs while
they investigated staffing levels and ethical concerns.

Policy officer for the Federation of Legal Centres, Mr Lou Schetzer,
said it needed to be made clear to prospective participants that their
involvement was voluntary and would be kept confidential.

He said the federation had major concerns about the program because
many participants might not be aware of their rights.

Mr Schetzer said offenders faced a power imbalance at police stations
and some might feel compelled to take part in the program or believe
that they had no choice.

"What will happen when they have to explain this to people from
non-English-speaking backgrounds, people with mental illnesses and
young or indigenous people; they may be intimidated into
participating," he said.

The program which will be funded under the Prime Minister's National
Illicit Drug Strategy, will involve people being interviewed about
their drug use and supplying a urine sample within 48 hours of being
charged with an offence - not necessarily drug offences.

The interviews would be conducted by non-police trained researchers,
but the president of Liberty Victoria, Ms Felicity Hampel, QC, said it
was vital the information remained impossible - to access for any
other purpose.

"Its protocols and procedures will need to be scrutinised by ethics
committees to make sure all possible wrinkles were ironed out," she
said.

But an associate professor at Monash University's centre for police
and justice studies, Dr Art Veno, said the program gave a great
opportunity to clarify the "grey area of drug-related crime.

"The nexus between drugs and crime is something that has eluded
researchers," he said.

"It is always spoken of as a high proportion - but to more accurately
measure that would be invaluable," he said.

Dr Veno said, if successful, the research would probably indicate that
a high amount of crimes were drug related and give weight to the harm
minimisation approach to the drug problem.