NAT WANTS EVERY OVERDOSE REPORTED

The head of the NSW Nationals' drugs committee, Mr Andrew Fraser,
plans to toughen his party's hardline policy even further by seeking
to make it mandatory for health workers and other agencies to report
people using "hard" drugs to police.

Mr Fraser will ask the State parliamentary party at its meeting on
Thursday to add to its policy that doctors and those working in
agencies such as the Department of Community Services (DOCS) who come
into contact with people using drugs of addiction must report it.

"If there's an overdose, I'm saying it's got to be reported to the
judicial system ... hepatitis C must be notified. This is what has to
happen with drugs. We have people saying we have lost the war against
drugs. I say we haven't even started it."

The Nationals already favour a "throw away the key" approach to drug
dealers, and support detoxification through use of the controversial
drug Naltrexone and rehabilitation based on abstinence rather than
harm minimisation.

Mr Fraser is hoping that the Nationals' Liberal Coalition partners
will also make mandatory reporting part of their election platform in
the lead-up to the State election.

However, the information officer with the National Drug and Alcohol
Centre, Mr Paul Dillon, said such a policy would lead to an increase
in drug deaths.

"It's only now that we are seeing people who are with those who suffer
overdoses feeling comfortable reporting it or calling an ambulance. It
has taken a great deal of time educating users that it is safe for
them to report overdoses without fear of reprisal," he said. "This
would be a massive step backwards. We would see drug use going further
underground."

Meanwhile, a split has developed in local government ranks over
whether there should be a "war on drugs" with zero tolerance policing
or "harm minimisation" policies.

Following his proposal late last year that his city run heroin trials,
the Labor Mayor of Newcastle, Councillor Greg Heys, has asked the
council's social impact consultative panel to report soon on the
trials and safe injecting rooms.

"This needs a community approach," he said. "With AIDS we could have
been oppressive towards homosexuals. We could have said they
themselves were to blame. The zero tolerance approach does not see it
as a symptom of what is going on in society."

The Deputy Mayor of Tamworth, Cr Warren Woodley, has formed a lobby
group, Australian Cities Against Drugs, to fight harm minimisation
policies.

"Shooting galleries are not a fix for the drug problem," said Cr
Woodley, who plans to fight "drug liberalisation and legalisation"
proposals by candidates at the March State election.