DEALERS IN LOGAN SELL HEROIN KITS TO STUDENTS

HEROIN starter kits were being offered to school children for as little as
$7, a Logan drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre has warned.

Logan House manager Darryl Sinclair said drug agencies and needle exchange
agencies had alerted him to the problem.

Mr Sinclair said the starter kits, which are believed to contain a syringe
and a small dose of heroin, were a marketing exercise for the upcoming
school holidays.

"It's pretty cheap considering that last school holidays they were $20," he
said.

"It's bloody terrible. Kids have enough pressures in their life without
having to face drugs.

"If they (dealers) sell enough of the stuff, they're making good money and
they can feed their habits."

Mr Sinclair said there were many risks associated with starter kits,
including the possibility of an overdose and contracting Hep C or HIV
through pre-used syringes.

He also stressed the problem was not limited to the Logan area.

Queensland's Alcohol and Drug Foundation spokesman Bob Aldred said free
starter kits were being offered in Ipswich and he knew of an instance where
a child aged eight went into a chemist to buy needles.

Mr Aldred said Logan was potentially a large market for drugs as it was one
of the fastest growing cities in Australia.

"In a situation where you've got high unemployment, high marital
breakdowns, poor transport and a lack of alternative sporting, recreation
and leisure pursuits, you are really setting the scene for a problem," he
said.

"You've got all the ingredients for someone to make a lot of money."

Drug Arm's Health Promotion Co-ordinator Judith Hart said it was important
for parents to talk to their children about the effects of drugs and to
point out the legal penalties.

"The strongest reason for children not experimenting with drugs is because
their parents wouldn't like it," she said.

Police and several drug agencies, including the Queensland Intravenous AIDS
Association, said they had not heard of heroin starter kits being sold for
$7 in Logan.

Meanwhile, claims that Brisbane leads the nation in heroin use are
misleading and false, according to government sources and drug experts.

Mr Aldred said that while Brisbane did have a serious heroin problem, it
was definitely not the nation's worst- affected city.

"The fact is that needle distribution has increased fairly rapidly - people
are accessing the needles and there are fewer risks of HIV and Hepatitis C
infection," Mr Aldred said.

"But in comparison to other states, there was a recent report that showed
we were nowhere near other places."

A spokesman for Police Minister Tom Barton said police, along with other
government agencies, were actively working to address the level of drugs in
the community.

However, the fact that Brisbane clinics were handing out more needles than
anyone else did not correlate to more drug use, he said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski