SOCIAL SCIENTISTS TO BLAME

NEXT week is National Carers' Week. Your report (Crash risk is driver, not
drug, 23/9) gave details of a Melbourne "conference" that was told that
"half of the one in 100 Australians with a psychotic illness have a drug or
alcohol problem and that these sufferers should not be expected to 'get
off' drugs but be taught to manage by substituting a couple of beers for a
line of speed".

Many who suffer mental illness are diagnosed with drug addiction. The WA
Centre for Neurosciences has identified that those who suffer schizophrenic
episodes and use marijuana or speed will be 20 to 30 times more likely to
suffer worsening of their symptoms. Many will seek help in emergency wards
but will be turned away because of lack of beds. Politicians and the
medical profession are not listening.

The director of health sciences at the University of Queensland, David
Kavanagh, said he believed that it was important to get the mentally ill to
use drugs safely. Is he for real? If there is one certainty about the
hazards of managing the mentally ill, it is that they rarely comply with
their regime of prescribed medication.

A failed 15-year-old harm minimisation pragmatism lurks behind the highly
organised push to legalise all drugs and the responsibility for this lies
with our social and health scientists.

It is time seriously to call for professional accountability and demand to
be told just why our much-needed Federal and State health dollars are
misappropriated.

GERALDINE MULLINS, Geraldton.