HOW TO SAVE DYING TOWNS AND DYING KIDS

As part of the Human Rights Comission's Bush Talks program, I have
travelled in the past year to 30 regional cities, small country towns
and remote communities and, at some time in most places, people would
talk to me about the local drug problem. But it was mid-year, in
Orange, when it was discussed in detail, that I learned the
seriousness of the heroin problem.

I remember how shocked I was. I had thought heroin was a big-city
problem, that the major problem drugs in the bush were alcohol and
marijuana. When country people had spoken of drugs, I had assumed they
meant alcohol and marijuana.

After that, wherever I went, when people talked about drugs, I'd ask
what drugs. More often than not, the answer was heroin. Along the NSW
North Coast, in coastal cities and towns in Queensland, in the
south-west of Western Australia, central Victoria - even in central
Australia.

As this week's Herald reports have detailed, heroin has penetrated all
corners of regional and rural Australia. It is killing hundreds of
young Australians every year and making thousands incapable of
meaningful participation in their communities. And it's driving
property crime in country areas to record heights.

What is to be done? I found that people in country towns know what is
needed.

The first is treatment. Country people complain that health services,
especially mental health services, are inadequate in most rural areas.
Few have detoxification centres, not even the large regional cities.

Most heroin users are forced to travel to capital cities for an
initial detox. There, they are cut off from the family and friends who
could help them and, at the same time, they are exposed to the greater
availability of drugs. They find it harder to get off heroin and
harder to stay off it.

The answer, I was told, was to set up detox centres in country areas
and improve mental health support.

Second, we need to explore other approaches to the heroin problem. I
confess to a personal loathing for hard drugs that makes me shudder at
the thought of any alternative to heavy criminal sanctions for supply
and possession.

But I must also admit that policies towards hard drugs are simply not
working. We have to face some facts:

* In spite of legal policies of prohibition, heroin use is
widespread.

* In spite of law enforcement budgets of hundreds of millions of
dollars and regular, well-publicised drug busts, the importation and
distribution of heroin show no sign of abating.

* Hundreds of kids are dying every year from heroin
use.

I don't know what the effective alternatives will be. But it's time to
start testing those that have been put forward in good faith, such as
the proposed ACT heroin trial and other proposals for the controlled
supply of heroin in medical settings, perhaps in a series of pilot
programs in different parts of the country.

The third need is the most difficult. We have to give young people in
country towns a future with opportunities and purpose. When I travel
through rural communities, I hear continually about the sense of
hopelessness that so many country people have. Many towns struggle to
continue when services are withdrawn. A woman I met in Port Augusta
called it "the dying town syndrome".

The withdrawal of one service leads to the withdrawal of others. When
a bank goes, for example, the town loses not only the four or five or
six people the bank employs. It also loses their families, perhaps 20
or 30 people. Student numbers drop at the local school and so a
teacher and his or her family leave, too. People who travel into a
neighbouring town to do their banking do their shopping there, too. So
several local shops close and their owners and workers and their
families leave town. And so on. According to one estimate, when a bank
closes, $350 per person a month goes out of the town.

Dying towns and dying kids. The rate of suicide and suicide attempts
among young people in the bush is alarming. Everywhere I went, people
spoke with distress about youth suicide. In some ways the heroin
problem is like the suicide problem. Young people who think they have
nothing to live for take their lives intentionally or
unintentionally.

Country people are deeply worried about the future of their
communities, about their own future and that of their children. If we
are serious about tackling heroin, then we have to ensure that country
Australia has a future. That means jobs, schools, community services,
access to technology and so on - the kinds of things city people
expect for their kids and often simply take for granted.

Getting tough on crime and wringing our hands about the drug problem
may be good election-winning strategies. But they won't solve the
problems of young people in the country. The only thing that will do
that is ensuring they have a future.