METHADONE DOLED OUT LIKE SOUP, FORUM TOLD

A QUEENSLAND drug specialist has described methadone clinics around the
country as the "modern day" equivalent of the soup kitchens of the 1930s.

Royal Brisbane Hospital alcohol and drug service director John Saunders
said methadone was "doled out to huge numbers" of people every day, with
"very little attention paid to the individual needs of patients".

Professor Saunders' claims at a forum at State Parlia ment yesterday came
as the drug treatment lobby group organising the forum announced it would
sue the State and Federal Governments for giving addicts methadone.

DrugAid said its cases would stress the dangers of using methadone in drug
treatment programmes.

DrugAid founder Pat Assheton said methadone had damaging side-effects, was
far more addictive than heroin and caused more than a third of opiate
deaths in Queensland each year.

Ms Assheton said that within a month, DrugAid would take three class
actions to the Supreme Court on behalf of "several thousand people". Two of
the cases concerned methadone and the third related to deaths in jail of
drug-addicted prisoners, she said.

She said slow-release morphine and the controversial drug Naltrexone were
superior forms of treatment.

"Our first aim is to stop using a product that's adulterated like methadone
and get real, get into the 21st century and use better products like
slow-release morphine and other products that are being looked at now," Ms
Assheton said.

The "methadone lobby" had prevented the approval in Australia of
Naltrexone, that had been used to treat drug addiction in the US for 11
years, she said.

Her call to push through trials of Naltrexone was echoed by Professor
Saunders, who warned that delays in making the drug available would create
a black market for it.

"If we don't have the support to make Naltrexone available people will buy
it on the black market, people will borrow it from their next- door
neighbours or friends and you will have a chaotic situation develop,"
Professor Saunders said.

"We have had several people come to grief because they have taken it,
having obtained it from their friends or relatives or neighbours."

Professor Saunders, who has been described as the "architect" of Naltrexone
trials in Queensland, said the drug was not a "panacea".

"It is not the treatment of choice for everybody, but it has a significant
role particularly for those people who have been maintained on methadone
and want to graduate into a life which isn't centred around taking
methadone," he said.

Health Minister Wendy Edmond said she was not prepared to rush into
introducing Naltrexone.

Ms Edmond said there were enough funds in the forthcoming Budget to do
clinical trials of 50 patients.

"I believe I have a responsibility as Health Minister to do everything I
can to ensure the safety of these patients involved," Ms Edmond said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski