CALLS TO CLOSE INJECTING ROOM

AN anti-drugs group today called for Sydney's heroin injecting room to
be shut down, after a report it commissioned found that overdose rates
at the centre were 36 times higher than in the surrounding
neighbourhood.

Drug Free Australia executive director Michael Robinson said the money
spent on the Kings Cross injecting room should be reallocated to
prevention programs.

"The government and the injecting room are all about keeping people on
drugs," he said.

"(The centre) has failed on its own indicators. It should be closed,
and that money should be put into rehabilitation."

But NSW Premier Bob Carr, whose government this month decided to
continue for four years the trial of the Sydney Medically Supervised
Injecting Centre, dismissed the call.

"On balance, it's better to have a medically supervised injecting room
than to have these people injecting in the alleyways of Kings Cross,
forcing the paramedics, the ambulance crews, to risk their own lives
trying to track them down when an overdose has occurred," he told reporters.

The injecting room's medical director, Ingrid van Beek, said the Drug
Free Australia report's findings were based on false assumptions.

"We would strongly dispute the figure of 36 times the number of
overdoses. That is incorrect," she said.

Dr van Beek said the rate of non-fatal overdoses in the community was
always under-reported, because it relied on self-reporting by drug
users.

High overdose rates at the centre were not surprising because the
injecting room targeted high-risk drug users, she said.

One of the authors of the report, Gary Christian, today defended the
methodology of the report, which has also been criticised by the
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC).

"It is not 'back of the envelope'," Mr Christian said.

"It is using exactly the same data that (NDARC) are using, and exactly
the same assumptions, and I have challenged the drug liberalisation
lobby for two weeks to say where our calculations are wrong."

Drug Free Australia said the high overdose rates at the centre were
due to drug users experimenting with higher doses, knowing nurses
would be on hand to help them.

But Dr van Beek said drug users knew that, if they overdosed at the
injecting rooms, they would be revived with the drug Narcan, which
removes all heroin from the body.

"Most drug users won't risk having their $50 hit wasted, and being put
into an acute state of withdrawal," she said.

The injecting room trial began in 2001, in an effort to reduce heroin
overdoses, street drug use, and crime in the red light district.