Pubdate: Thu, 20 May 1999 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Contact: http://www.smh.com.au/ Author: Julia Baird WITNESSES TO THE HORROR OF ADDICTION HAVE THEIR SAY When Anthony Humphreys was five his mother, who was addicted to heroin, committed suicide. Six years later, his father, also a user, killed himself. Mr Humphreys, now 19 and in Year 12 at St Ignatius' College, Riverview, has been in and out of foster homes ever since. Yesterday he came to the Drug Summit to tell his story and take part in a "personal experiences" panel with welfare workers, former drug users, police and ambulance workers. Mr Humphreys was one of only two members of the panel who did not support trials of safe heroin injecting. He believed injecting rooms would send out the wrong message, "for the simple fact that we'll say 'this is a safe place to inject drugs, you'll be safe if you take this drug here'". He said people needed to look at why people were taking drugs and not just focus on the symptoms of drug use. "Everybody takes drugs for a reason ... an issue they may have had in early life, since childhood or before," he said. A Sydney ambulance officer, Mr Jim Porter, made an impassioned plea to Government and Opposition MPs to consider the health and occupational safety of paramedics when voting on recommendations to establish heroin injection rooms. "We like to think our employers, the Government ... have to provide safe working environments for their employees. If you close shooting galleries [you] make people like me and my colleagues walk into dilapidated houses, with no electricity, [over] huge amounts of uncapped needles, walking up and down stairs with treads missing and no floorboards," he said. "[We have to] treat people under these circumstances, possibly kneel on these needles and get ourselves HIV or hepatitis C. We don't think the Government is doing its job, they are putting our lives at risk." Mr Porter said that in safe injecting rooms, supervisors regularly knocked at doors, checking that drug users were OK. "We are getting very sick of going to see young dead people. People who overdose in public toilets and laneways are often not found ... they die." Ms Jennifer Holmes, a registered nurse working in Kings Cross, and welfare worker Mr Mick Fernandez were in favour of safe injecting rooms for health reasons, while Mr Kevin Jones, a member of the Premier's Youth Advisory Council, said the community was at risk if people shot up in alleys, as were the users themselves. University student Ms Ariane Welsh said allowing injecting rooms would be a symbolic gesture. "We need to show young people ... we accept their problem and would like to help them with their problem," she said. However, Detective-Sergeant Ray King spoke of legal problems and said people who ran an injecting room could be charged with aiding and abetting or even manslaughter. The panel members also spoke of the stigma suffered by welfare workers who looked after injecting drug users, the need to be more conscious of the families of users and how young people should be involved in drugs education. Ms Welch said: "The way we treat young people and look at young people [is] a major problem in young people's drug abuse. Adults cannot do everything in terms of drug education. You can't generally get an adult to get young people to say drugs aren't cool." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea