SAFE-HOUSE CALL TO STEM HEROIN DEATH TOLL

FATAL heroin overdoses in Victoria jumped 34 per cent in 1998 to a
record 250 deaths, sparking renewed calls yesterday for the
establishment of safe injecting houses and a heroin trial similar to
one rejected for the ACT.

Victoria Police yesterday expressed alarm, and drug workers despair,
after the number of fatalities ballooned from 186 deaths in 1997.

Last year's toll was a five-fold increase from 1991, when 49 people
died.

Detective Chief Inspector John McKoy, of the police drug squad, said:
"Victorian police are extremely concerned about the large number of
heroin-related deaths".

He blamed lower heroin prices, greater purity and an increased supply
of the drug for the rise in deaths.

Mr McKoy said most victims were experienced users aged in their late
20s or early 30s.

He said police were more concerned about helping users then arresting
them.

"Victoria Police is not in the habit of charging people who are using
heroin, in the absence of other criminal acts." he said.

"We regard heroin users as victims of the trade and the Chief
Commissioner (Neil Comrie) is moving to put in place a number of
strategies to divert people away from the criminal justice system."

Police are running a program in northern and western Melbourne where
people found with small quantities of heroin for the first time are
only cautioned on the condition they receive counselling.

But a spokesman for Mr Comrie later said there were no plans to expand
the program.

Paul Dillon, of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, said
the Victorian Government and politicians nationwide had to seriously
consider introducing safe injecting rooms for drug users, along with
legally supplied heroin to registered addicts, as mooted in the
recently scuttled ACT trial. "As these numbers keep increasing, we
really need to do something dramatic to put a brake on the numbers of
people dying," Mr Dillon said.

But Mr Dillon questioned the accuracy of the latest Victorian figures,
released about 18 months ahead of Australian Bureau of Statistics
figures, because it took several months to verity if heroin was the
sole cause of death.

Mr McKoy said Victoria Police and the State's institute of Forensic
Medicine would conduct a detailed study into 25 heroin deaths this
year, searching for causes of drug use and overdose.

Chief executive of the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia,
David Crosbie, said governments were not doing enough to stem the
increase in overdose deaths, which were rising in all States except
South Australia.

"If this was a food poisoning outbreak or contaminated water,
governments would spend whatever they had to." Mr Crosbie said.

Deb Homburg, co-ordinator of the Buoyancy Foundation - a drug
counselling service in inner Melbourne - said governments should make
drug-testing kits available to heroin users to check the purity of
each dose.