DOCTORS BACK CALL ON HEROIN

A key medical group last night backed the introduction of safe injecting
rooms for heroin addicts.

The call from the Doctors Reform Society comes as Victoria's largest medical
organisation, the Australian Medical Association, prepares to debate vexed
drugs issues such as safe injecting rooms and medically supervised heroin
trials for addicts.

The reform society said the rooms would both reduce the harm caused by drugs
and dealing on streets.

The national president of the society, Dr Con Costa, said: "There's a lot of
benefit from the fact that people, and they could be your son or daughter .
. . being able to go to a surgically clean area, and use clean needles."

He said the community needed to consider addicts like they considered people
with any other disease, and not as criminals, misfits or outcasts.

Doctors entered the drugs debate yesterday after the Lord Mayor of
Melbourne, Cr Ivan Deveson, called for a proposed trial of legal heroin.

Melbourne City Council will debate the contentious question of safe
injecting rooms for heroin addicts in August.

Other doctors' groups yesterday supported calls for more debate on how to
battle the drugs problem.

Dr Bill Pring, the Victorian chairman of the Royal Australian and New
Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said: "The more community debate the
better. And that should include harm-minimisation strategies as well as more
curative strategies."

The Victorian chairman of the Royal Australian College of General
Practitioners, Dr Chris Hogan, said: "There should be active investigation
of all means of reducing the drug menace."

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett