WE CANNOT ALLOW A REPEAT OF THE LATE '90S HEROIN SCOURGE

NOT long ago it seemed that Victoria had largely been weaned off
heroin. Sure, it was still on the street, as it probably always will
be, but heroin deaths had dropped to record lows and authorities
were confident the scourge was in retreat. This newspaper
reported that success. Other illicit, killer drugs, such as "ice",
became the focus of police, political and media attention; winning
the war against heroin was an old story.

Tragically, smack is coming back and drug experts such as Nick
Crofts, from the Turning Point centre in Fitzroy, say we need to do
some serious thinking about our treatment service. It is, he says,
inadequate and struggling to cope with existing demand, let alone
with what is yet to come. Says Dr Crofts: "We are working in a
policy environment where the previous premier (Steve Bracks) said
very clearly heroin is gone and the only problem we have now is
amphetamines. Which is utterly wrong. State Government support for
both medical treatment for people with addictions and
the pharmaco-therapy program is pathetic."

If Dr Crofts is right, and we have no reason to doubt him, then we
are heading back to the dark, though recent, past of the late 1990s.
No one should pretend that dealing with heroin is easy, or simply
about spending more. For all the songs about it, heroin is neither
glamorous nor easily dealt with. The central issue is supply and, on
that score, Australia is on the horns of a dilemma.

The rules of supply and demand work with white-light precision in
the international drug trade, especially with an agriculture-based
crop: supply is booming; purity, too, has improved. With so much
heroin to offload, drug runners are taking greater risks to import
into countries with a cashed-up population -- where a minority use
opiates to escape the realities of day-to-day existence. When there
is so much, losing a shipment or two is no big deal.

The United Nations is worried. But here's the twist: Afghanistan is
the world's largest opium producer, accounting for 93 per cent of
the illegal trade. About 3 million of its people, 14 per cent of the
population, depend on its cultivation to survive.

The insurgency in that country, which this week claimed the life of
another Australian soldier, is heavily linked to opium, which earns
the cash to keep the Taliban in guns. The United States has long
since taken a scorched-earth approach to poppy cultivation in
Afghanistan, in part to starve the Taliban, in part to keep heroin
off US streets. Australia has taken a perhaps more pragmatic view:
we turn a blind eye to opium because, in part, we don't want to
provoke retribution.

Should we take a different stance? We think so. Australian diggers
face great danger in Afghanistan but everything must be done to stop
the poppy crop from seeding its tragedies on our streets. Anyone who
lived through the heroin epidemic of the late 1990s will remember
the toll taken by this pernicious drug. We must do all we can to
avoid repeating that.