KENNETT BACKS REVISED HEROIN TRIAL

The Premier, Mr Jeff Kennett, has expressed support for Melbourne City
Council's revised strategy for a national heroin trial, bringing about a
slight thaw in relations between City Hall and Spring Street.

Mr Kennett said he was prepared ``to try anything'' in the fight against
drugs, after earlier labelling the council ``naive'' for proposing its own
trial of legal heroin use.

He was not opposed to the heroin trial, he said, but it should not be
isolated to Canberra. ``I'd be happy to be part of it if I knew that they
were doing it in Sydney and Melbourne,'' he said.

He was commenting on the City of Melbourne's new strategy on drugs,
released after six months of consultation. It supports the proposed
Canberra heroin trial and its extension to Melbourne. But the idea of safe
injecting rooms in the city has been dumped.

But Mr Kennett came under pressure yesterday for the cutting of $400,000
funding to the Life Education drug program, which has run in primary
schools for 10 years.

The Opposition said the program, which reaches 200,000 students each year,
could have been saved if the Government stopped spending taxpayers' money
on political advertisements - a reference to full-page newspaper ads this
week on the Medicare agreement.

The Premier pledged to reconsider the Education Department's decision to
slash its $400,000 contribution to the Life Education program, after
criticism from teacher and parent groups.

But he said teachers were now trained to educate children about drug abuse
under the Turning the Tide project, which was a more integrated approach to
drug education.

``We're trying to put a system in place where's it's not out of the class
room and into a caravan once or twice a term or a year, but in fact is
there in the classroom the whole time,'' he said.

Mr Kennett was supported by the chair of addiction studies at Deakin
University, Mr Stephen Wallace, who said the present program had the
unwelcome capacity to increase drug use in children.

However, the Association of School Councils of Victoria said it was
concerned about individual schools having to find and pay for
drug-education programs.

The association's executive officer, Ms Rhonda Hinds, said Life Education
was a terrific program.

Ms Hinds said while she had not seen the details of the Government's
proposal another concern was that any new programs may not have the same
economy of scale.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson