NSW: Calls for shooting galleries renewed

AAP General News (Australia)
02-01-1999
NSW: Calls for shooting galleries renewed

By Catharine Munro, State Political Correspondent

SYDNEY, Feb 1 AAP - The New South Wales government today rejected calls from its own ranks
to set up heroin shooting galleries as pressure mounted over how to deal with teenage hard
drug abuse.

Welfare authorities and police now say a boy pictured yesterday on the front page of the
Sun-Herald newspaper shooting up in Caroline Lane, Redfern, was 16 years old, not 12 or 13 as
first thought.

The boy's mother complained she was powerless to get him into rehabilitation and claimed
heroin was "such an easy drug to get".

"They just seem to be able to get on it so easy," she told Channel Nine.

"I'm worried about he's going to kill himself. He's overdosed once."

Police said they would not press charges, but would counsel the boy.

NSW Health Minister Andrew Refshauge stressed the government would not scrap the needle
exchange program because it was highly successful in preventing the spread of HIV.

Dr Refshauge rejected opposition calls for an independent review of the program but said an
internal review would be ready after the March 27 state election.

He ruled out the introduction of injecting rooms, known as shooting galleries, a measure
advocated by Vic Smith, ALP candidate for the inner city electorate of Bligh, which covers
Caroline Lane.

"We need to provide a safe environment with health professionals to look after the needs of
addicts and in turn make the streets safer for the community," Cr Smith said.

"We need help and commitment on a national basis - and that means looking at education,
heroin trials and safe injecting rooms - if we're to beat it."

The proposal to trial injecting rooms for heroin users, recommended by the 1997 Royal
Commission into police to reduce the number of overdose deaths, was last year rejected by a
committee of New South Wales MPs.

But Dr Refshauge would not rule out limiting access to clean needles, according to age.

"What I'm asking for is a review to see the best response in regard to children," Dr
Refshauge told reporters, a measure advocated by the opposition.

"I think we have had a very good program that's prevented the spread of HIV and AIDS.

"We also have additional responsibilities for children, and I think we need to work out how
best to bring those together."

"Everyone under the age of 18 will be required to attend counselling and the option of
taking up drug treatment."

Dr Refshauge today released a 1996 survey of NSW high school students in which up to five
per cent of boys and three per cent of girls claimed to have used heroin or other opiates like
methadone or morphine.

However, the survey organisers at the Anti-Cancers Council of Victoria said the figure
might have been inflated by youthful bravado.

Opposition health spokeswoman Gillian Skinner said if the Coalition won power "everyone
under the age of 18 will be required to attend counselling and the option of taking up drug
treatment".

Chairman of the Prime Minister's Australian National Council on Drugs, Major Brian Watters,
said needle exchanges were an important front-line opportunity for health workers to offer
counselling.

He said workers should be trained to provide counselling to drug addicts, not just a clean
syringe.

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KEYWORD: HEROIN NIGHTLEAD

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