DRUG BUST SPARKS CRIME ALERT

Addicts will become desperate as shortages bite in the streets.

Police around the country are bracing themselves for a crime wave after $400
million worth of heroin was taken off the streets last week.

The heroin, seized from a boat that landed on remote Grants Beach on the New
South Wales north coast last Wednesday, would have provided each of
Australia's estimated 100,000 heroin users with enough to last between six
and 12 months.

In its absence, the price of the drug is expected to soar, with a
corresponding increase in crime.

As Paul Dillon, of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, explains
it, there is a mountain of evidence to show that the link between heroin
abuse and crime is very, very strong".

"Heroin is expensive, people need to use a lot of it, and many of those
people are unemployed, or on low incomes, and so they turn to crime and
prostitution," he said.

Mr Dillon said it was ludicrous for anybody to suggest that a heroin
shortage, or its spiralling cost, would encourage users to abandon the drug.

"Many heroin users are dependent upon heroin," he said. "If, all of a
sudden, it dried up, they'd just search for it, and pay whatever it cost."

"We were talking about this on Triple J this week. A user telephoned and
said heroin users aren't shopping at Coles, looking for a red light special.
They don't quibble about price. They just pay it."

A study into the link between crime and drug abuse, conducted by the
research centre in 1994, found that as much as 80 per cent of all crime
against property, such as theft, could be linked to drug abuse. In addition,
a NSW Government study last year found that 80 per cent of imprisoned heroin
users admitted that property crime was their main source of income.

Crime against property, including robbery, break-ins, theft of motor cars,
and from motor cars, is estimated to cost the community more than $2 billion
a year.

That a shortage of heroin would lead to an increase in crime was also
accepted by Mr Wesley Noffs, of the Ted Noffs Drug Rehabilitation Centre.

"It's a very, very significant haul, and it will unquestionably have an
impact on supply," Mr Noffs said.

"If it constitutes a large amount of the overall trade, it will undoubtedly
push the price up. and it's debatable whether that's a good or a bad thing,
because an increase in cost means an increase in crime, prostitution, the
unsavory things that are linked to heroin use."

"I applaud the Federal Police for their diligence, and I think this is an
incredible result, but I don't think law enforcement provides long-term
solutions to heroin abuse, if anything, there will be a temporary
interruption in supply."

"If you think about it, what the police have done is taken $400 million away
from someone, somewhere, and those people are obviously just going to put
effort into making that money back."

The police and Government officers involved in the haul have acknowledged
the impact on the availability of heroin.

The Federal Police commissioner, Mr Mick Palmer, said: "This will have a
negative impact on the availability of heroin on the streets, and we expect
it to have an inflationary effect. The price of heroin will go up."

And the trouble with this, according to those who work in drug law reform,
is that if heroin is harder to get, and costs more, the community might not
thank the police for cracking this syndicate, because crime will soar.

In which case, according to drug abuse support workers, police and Customs
might have done the community something of a disservice by concentrating on
detection, rather than harm-minimisation strategies.

Mr Dillon said NSW police had accepted that a crackdown on drug crime often
made things worse for users, and the community.

Mr Noffs said it was his personal opinion, based on a lifetime's work in
drug rehabilitation, that solutions to the heroin problem lay in treatment,
not crime detection.

"I don't think you should make criminals out of victims," he said. "1 would
have been happy to support a heroin trial, but even without it, the Swiss
heroin trial had such positive results, it's obviously one solution we
should look at."

Accurate figures are difficult to get, but it is generally accepted that
there are somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 heroin users in Australia.

If the $400 million haul is equal to 20 million hits, then the shipment
would have kept these users in heroin for somewhere between six and 12
months.

"But it's dangerous to play with figures, because we don't know how much
heroin is out there, how much is on the way," Mr Dillon said. "This could be
an amazing amount of heroin, or it could be just a small part of the overall
trade. It could be half. It could amount to nothing."

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst