LEGAL THREAT TO STOP HEROIN INJECTING ROOMS

THE Howard Government will consider using Federal law to prosecute anyone
who uses a heroin injecting room if any State declares its intention to
open a new one.

Federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison confirmed yesterday that threatening
to prosecute users under Federal law was one option if the Commonwealth
believed any State government was moving to soften its stance against
illegal drug use by opening an injecting room or, in the case of NSW,
opening another one.

On Monday, Prime Minister John Howard said the Government would do
everything constitutionally possible to prevent any expansion of the heroin
injecting room program in Sydney's Kings Cross.

Senator Ellison said there were several options.

He said the Commonwealth would never allow heroin to be imported for any
trial of dispensing prescription heroin. He did not rule out using Federal
law to prosecute those using illegal drugs in an injecting room.

"We would look at what the Commonwealth could do constitutionally," Senator
Ellison said. "If there were any further proposals in Australia for heroin
injecting rooms, we would look at what action we could take."

Attorney-General Jim McGinty said on Monday that the WA Government had no
plan to establish a heroin injecting room. At its national conference in
Sydney last week, the Australian Labor Party voted that each State should
make its own decision on the issue and NSW remains the only State where
such a room operates.

Senator Ellison said the Commonwealth supported rehabilitation of drug
users and worked with State police, recognising community policing was
generally their role.

"At a national level we are focused on reducing suppply and cracking
organised crime that deals in drugs," he said. "We work our end, they work
their end."

Senator Ellison said State and Federal governments were completing an
agreement to allow Federal police to prosecute any State offence linked to
a Federal investigation.

Mr Howard announced $6.6 million in grants to 89 community groups across
Australia yesterday, including 13 in WA, to fight drug abuse at the
grassroots level.

He said the approach to drug use should be as uncompromising as demanding
that children go to school.

"Well for the life of me I can't see why we shouldn't have a completely
zero tolerance, an uncompromising approach to illicit drug taking," he said.

Mr Howard said the number of heroin deaths had plummeted in the past five
years. AFP Comissioner Mick Keelty said the number had fallen from 1116
nationally in 1999 to 364 in 2002.

Opposition Leader Mark Latham appeared to buckle under an attack on Labor's
drugs policy by Mr Howard.

In comments at odds with ALP policy, Mr Latham described the sole injecting
centre at Kings Cross as a "one-off".

The ALP policy, confirmed at the national conference last week, foreshaows
more than one injecting centre.

Mr Latham said he was eager to see what evidence or findings came out of
the Kings Cross trial.

"If it's a failure, it should be closed down," he said.

"Kings Cross is a one-off and I would expect it would remain that way."

Democrats WA Senator Brian Greig said the zero tolerance approach had not
worked and users unable to get heroin due to an opium drought had shifted
to methylamphetamine.

"The drug problem isn't fixed, it is simply being shifted," Senator Greig said.