EXPENSIVE OSLO - CITY OF THE CHEAP FIX

Norwegian Capital Tops Europe's Overdose Deaths League

Its standard of living was officially recognised this month as the best
money can buy, but Norway has a darker, less publicised claim to fame: Oslo
has become Europe's drug overdose capital and is awash with heroin.

The city is infamously expensive. A pint of beer will set you back $7.50, a
packet of cigarettes $8.50. Heroin, however, is relatively cheap - one
tenth of a gram costs about the same as 20 Marlboro.

The drug's relative affordability has encouraged thousands of Norwegians to
develop a habit, with fatal consequences. Every fifth autopsy carried out
by the city coroner now reaches the same depressing conclusion: death by
drug overdose. Oslo has the worst rate of drug-related deaths of 42
European cities, according to a report by the Council of Europe's Pompidou
Group, set up in 1971 to study drug abuse and trafficking.

Last year 338 Norwegians died from drug overdoses, 114 of them in Oslo,
compared with 75 in 1990. The Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug
Research estimates that the number of intravenous users has doubled in the
past decade to 14,000.

These statistics contrast sharply with the picture painted by the United
Nations human development report this month, which for the second year
running concluded that life expectancy, education and healthcare in Norway
were better than anywhere else.

One explanation for the high death rate is the injection culture. "Contrary
to many other countries Norwegian drug addicts inject themselves with
heroin rather than smoke it," says Ketil Bentzen, who is deputy director
general of the ministry of social affairs. "Nor do they take it on its own.
They mix it with pills such as Rohypnol and alcohol, and that is deadly,"
he adds.

Even though the possession, use and trafficking of drugs are illegal and
punishable by a maximum prison term of 21 years, the drug scene in Oslo is
startlingly open. A hotdog kiosk near to Oslo's central station is the
focal point for addicts and pushers. An estimated 500 to 600 people visit
it every day. The addicts, whose emaciated faces poke out from hooded tops,
look like the tortured Norwegians depicted by Edvard Munch in his paintings.

"It's like something out of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables," says Trym
Skarra, a city council social worker.

Mr Bentzen is philosophical about the future. "It's not difficult to detox
an addict," he says. "The real challenge is to find something with which to
replace their addiction, and the government is unable to distribute the
meaning of life."