HAZY LOGIC DICTATES A PAINFUL PROHIBITION

BETWEEN moments of pungent humour, The Barbarian Invasions is a
confronting movie. Facing a painful death to cancer, Remy, a
self-described "socialist, hedonist lecher", accepts Montreal's
crumbling, cramped public health system as his left-wing fate. Until
his estranged son, a rich investment banker - a "capitalist, ambitious
prude", says Remy - jets in from London to make his father's last days
more comfortable.

Sebastien learns from a doctor friend that heroin will be "800 per
cent more powerful" than morphine - the standard fare dispensed by
doctors to cancer patients. And so he seeks out the dealers and users
necessary to secure heroin for Remy.

When it comes to helping those with painful terminal illness, the
story will be sadly familiar to many in Australia. My father died of
cancer, like more than 35,000 Australians each year. And like many
others, he died in pain. It is hard to know what hurt him most. The
pain that grew in his spine and, in the end, seemed to rack his entire
body. The pain that he would never see his family again. Or the
knowledge that we would watch his painful demise.

Like Remy, doctors only offered my father morphine to relieve his
pain. Different sorts with different names, my family and I
administered it to him in ever increasing doses, doubling, sometimes
tripling what doctors advised. Morphine chased his pain. And sometimes
caught it. When it didn't, it was dreadful. If minutes were like hours
for us, I cannot imagine how it was for him. I know one thing: he
needed more than what doctors offered him. Watching The Barbarian
Invasions, I felt I had failed him for not traipsing the streets for
heroin. If it could have relieved his physical pain or stoic mental
suffering, that would have been a godsend.

Australia has an irrational history when it comes to using heroin for
those dying in pain. In May 1953, the Menzies government prohibited
its importation after pressure from the World Health Organisation, in
turn under pressure from the US, where a burgeoning drug problem was
emerging. Yet in Australia there was no drug problem to speak of;
instead heroin was used to manage serious pain, especially for the
terminally ill.

The ban went ahead despite objections from the director-general of
health in NSW that "heroin ... is quite effectively controlled in this
state and ... I see no justification to enforce absolute prohibition".
And despite similar protests by the Royal Australasian College of
Physicians and the predecessor to the Australian Medical Association,
then the Australian Federal Council of the British Medical
Association.

Ever since, heroin has been lost to the moral battlefield of illicit
drugs.

Once banned, it was a drug with no legitimate role, one that junkies
use and drug criminals deal in. What strikes me as more criminal is
that, in 2004, the terminally ill still die in pain. Irrational
responses get in the way of treating their pain.

On the one hand, politicians parade their massive heroin hauls, piles
of white bricks, as wins in the tough war on drugs. On the other, they
help drug addicts on the street shoot up, providing them with clean
needles and clean rooms. Those left out in the cold are the terminally
ill.

It does not require much nuance to understand that allowing doctors to
administer heroin to the dying is not a slippery slope to its
legalisation. Nor will it lead to a nation of addicts. Doctors
prescribe prohibited substances by the hundreds. Why is heroin
different? A stubborn, unthinking abstinence lobby. That is the difference.

It does not require much compassion to understand that a fear that
someone you love, dying of cancer, may become addicted to heroin is
less important than ensuring they are relieved of terrible pain.

Why the irrational fear? Addiction as a moral evil has little resonance
for those in pain.

It does not require much political courage to suggest that if British
doctors can use heroin for those dying in pain, why shouldn't
Australians facing a similar fate have the same choice? Granted,
prominent doctors in both Australia and Britain point to doubts about
whether heroin provides better pain relief than morphine. Nurses who
have given heroin to the dying have fewer doubts. I am with the
nurses. They are at the coalface of suffering.

It is true that morphine is a derivative of heroin, otherwise known as
diacetyl-morphine. But heroin is more soluble, entering the body
faster, absorbed quickly into fatty tissue like the brain. Heroin
users talk about feeling a "rush". After that initial euphoria, heroin
causes an alternately wakeful and drowsy state.

I don't want junkies determining drug policy but that they favour
heroin over morphine suggests that the terminally ill might also
prefer it. Euphoria is the wrong word for those dying of cancer, but
if heroin can offer any kind of relief, mental or physical, why not
offer it?

If we do more to ease the pain of the terminally ill, it may take much
of the heat out of the euthanasia debate. That too is a good thing.

In the end, Remy dies at home surrounded by those who love him most,
and free from pain. My father was less fortunate. His family was
there. But so was that unwelcome intruder, pain. With an ounce of
common sense, compassion and political pluck, perhaps it need not have
ended that way.