CANBERRA, Aug 14 (Reuter) Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Thursday
joined churches in opposing the country's first legal heroin programme, which
is planned to start in 1998 and will cost A$10 million (US$7.4 million).

``I am myself ... profoundly ambivalent, indeed more than that, sceptical to
the point of hostility,'' Howard told a Sydney radio station.

``I remain to be convinced that there's any benefit at all in this heroin
trial,'' said Howard, a conservative politician.

Six churches on Wednesday also condemned the plan for territory and state
governments to provide addicts with heroin at a nominal price, calling it
``totally outrageous.''

``One really has to ask about the logic and the rationale behind the thinking
which produces a decision to endorse heroin taking,'' said Reverend John
Edmondstone, president of the New South Wales Council of Churches.

``The fact is that heroin kills people,'' Edmondstone said.

Health ministers from the national government, two territories and six states
agreed last month to support the trial which will start in the Australian
Capital Territory.

The first phase involves about 40 addicts purchasing the heroin for a nominal
price of about $A15 a week.

The second and third phases, which involve more than 1,000 addicts from three
cities, would be carried out over two to three years. The second and third
stages need final approval.

Supporters of the Australian trial said the aim was to supply safe heroin,
prevent overdoses, fight the spread of disease from shared needles, improve
addicts' quality of life and reduce drugrelated crime.

Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Reverend Harry Goodhew said similar heroin
schemes overseas had proved ineffective and the programme sent the wrong
message to Australia's youth.

``Such a programme will be costly, but how much more costly will it be to our
society as a whole,'' said Reverend Noel Edwardes, president of the Baptist
Churches in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.

The Australian government would have to import 184 kg (405 pounds) of
synthetic heroin to implement the scheme after Tasmania, the only state in
Australia permitted to harvest opium poppy crops, refused to supply the drug.

However, Tasmania agreed to support the heroin trial in principle after
ensuring its A$80 million legal poppy industry was not at risk from the
International Narcotics Control Board the body which controls the world's
legal heroin industry.