LORD MAYOR SUPPORTS POLICE DRUG SCHEME

Melbourne's Lord Mayor, Cr Ivan Deveson, yesterday backed a police
initiative for people caught with small amounts of marijuana to be allowed
off with a warning, saying policing alone would not reduce illicit drug use.

Cr Deveson also revealed that the City Of Melbourne had deployed two safe
city officers to liaise directly with police and traders on dealing with
illicit drug use.

And Cr Deveson said he anticipated the lord mayors of Australia's capital
cities would sign a declaration of cooperation on drug policy when they met
in Brisbane in July.

Victoria's police commissioner, Mr Neil Comrie, is considering ordering
that people caught with small amounts of marijuana for the first time be
given a warning, rather than be automatically charged.

The strategy, which has been trialled in Broadmeadows, is designed to keep
drug users out of court and free up resources to target illicit drug
traffickers.

Cr Deveson and Mr Comrie addressed the first of three planned public forums
on minimising the harm caused by illicit drug use held at the Melbourne
Town Hall.

The forum was held as the first report of the capital city lord mayors'
drug advisory committee, headed by Professor David Penington, was publicly
released.

The report says overseas experience showed that a reliance on law
enforcement was not solving the drug problem and that strategies directed
at reducing demand were more relevant.

Cr Deveson said he did not back away from his support for the use of
surveillance cameras and private security people to deter drug dealing in
the city but said the long-term answer lay in reducing demand.

"I have seen enough to have a strong commitment to treating the addicts
like a health problem and the trafficker who is not an addict as the enemy
of the city," he said.

Mr Comrie told last night's forum that the police recognised that we lived
"in a drug-taking society" and needed to apply strategies which minimised
the consequent harm.

Police policy was not to carry out any unwarranted patrols or person checks
in the vicinity of needle exchanges, he said, and to limit prosecution in
non-fatal overdose situations to exceptional cases only.

Associate Professor Margaret Hamilton, director of Turning Point, an
alcohol and drug centre, said anything that kept people out of jail had to
be to the community's advantage. "It (jail) is where people learn to
conduct crime."

One of Australia's leading medical researchers has criticised the Federal
Government's attitude to drugs and said it was promoting tried and failed
policies.

Dr Nick Crofts, who recently won a prestigious international award for
attempts to reduce drug-related harm, warned that Australia's world-leading
drugs policies were being jeopardised by poll-driven decision making.

"Two recent examples include the Prime Minister's personal rejection of the
Canberra heroin trial, and his so-called Tough on Drugs strategy."

Dr Crofts is the deputy director of the Macfarlane Burnet Centre for
Medical Research in Melbourne and an internationally respected HIV/AIDS
researcher.