Pubdate: Thu, 6 May 1999 Source: Age, The (Australia) Copyright: 1999 David Syme & Co Ltd Contact: http://www.theage.com.au/ A FAILURE OF POLITICAL COURAGE But Defying The Law Is Not The Best Way To Advance The War Against Drugs. WITH the best of intentions, clergy and social workers at the Wayside Chapel in Sydney's Kings Cross have decided to open a ``shooting gallery'', or safe injecting room, for heroin users. They are taking a considerable legal risk: under NSW law, aiding and abetting the self-administration of a drug carries a penalty of two years jail. If death results from the self-administration of the drug, such aiding and abetting can lead to a charge of manslaughter. While it is clearly acting illegally, the chapel has invoked the ancient right of sanctuary, arguing that because the room is on church ground it is not subject to secular laws. The NSW Attorney-General, Mr Jeff Shaw, has made it clear that Australian law does not recognise such sanctuary. But he has also said that police have a discretion as to whether to charge the clergy, inviting the interpretation that a legal blind eye will be turned to the injecting room. Of course, a challenge to the law as a way of forcing the issue of safe injecting houses on to the political agenda may be exactly what the Wayside Chapel administrators intended. They are confronted daily by the tragic consequences of heroin addiction, and their frustration with the reluctance of politicians to confront the issue is understandable. Last year a NSW joint select committee investigating the issue of safe injecting rooms decided by six to four against their introduction. Despite this, as the evidence mounts that the punitive approach to illegal drug use is not working, expert opinion is increasingly tending towards using injecting rooms as part of a harm-minimisation approach. Certainly, the evidence from countries such as Switzerland, where legal injecting rooms have been established, is that deaths from overdose have been significantly reduced. They also appear to have curbed the incidence of HIV. Permitting young people to inject themselves with heroin under supervision is a concept few people could view with equanimity, but it is preferable to them injecting themselves with unclean needles in alleys. Even so, the establishment of injecting rooms in defiance of the law is not an ideal solution. While police do have a discretion to decline to charge individual offenders - as shown in Victoria where a decision not to charge first-time drug offenders has been in place since last year - it forces police to make decisions that properly belong to politicians. If political leaders had been prepared to take a more enlightened approach to the drug problem, the youth workers and ministers of religion who are operating the injecting room would not now need to be taking part in acts of civil disobedience. At least, their actions are likely to ensure the issue of safe injecting centres is given serious consideration at the coming drug summit. - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry