Pubdate: Tue, 18 May 1999 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Contact: http://www.smh.com.au/ Author: Greg Bearup THEN, FAR FROM THE SHELTERED HOUSE ... A squad of young Elder Mormons was on patrol in Cabramatta Mall yesterday, seeking to save wayward addicts. It tried in vain to spread the word politely, but the folk of Cabramatta just didn't want to hear. While the politicians and delegates talked at the Drug Summit, the hard edge of Sydney's drug world rolled on. The young Mormons found there may be more to solving Australia's drug problem than an earnest sermon about the virtues of abstinence. As the summit at Parliament House broke for lunch, a couple of chubby young constables jogged past the Mormons, puffing into their radios. Around the corner they ran, and then a few blocks more, receiving instructions along the way. In a park near the police station, more police had gathered. One officer had crash-tackled a young man who was being handcuffed on the ground. The man had been wanted for selling stolen goods. When police approached him, he allegedly rammed a shopping trolley at them and ran. As the arresting police emptied his pockets, they found a couple of needles. The politicians and the Drug Summit will head to Cabramatta tomorrow. "These are the people who are meant to be deciding the future for drug policies," one officer at Cabramatta said yesterday. "You'd think that they'd have been here before this. It's open every day." Back in a restaurant off the mall, a young Caucasian girl walked in on the lunching Vietnamese. She walked around every table asking if anyone wanted to buy boxes of batteries that were still in the plastic wrapping. There were no takers and no complaints that she appeared to be selling stolen goods. While at the summit they focused on this hard side of drugs, the soft side - the casual users who make up the vast majority drug takers - was facing another Monday at work in everyday jobs. But in Kings Cross, Ray, a middle-aged man, waited for his girlfriend to return home. Kate is a stripper and prostitute with a hefty cocaine and heroin addiction. She had gone down to the dole office to fill in her forms. Ray explains that Kate, like most drug-using girls of the Cross, uses her weekly cheque to take a night off, a night when she doesn't have to work to support her habit. "She earns more money than the Prime Minister, you know," Ray says of the money she squirts up her arms. Kate is a few hours late and Ray suspects she wanted some coke before starting work, so picked up a client on the way home. That's life for Kate. Sleeping with 25 to 30 men a week in exchange for six shots of coke and three or four shots of heroin daily, with a day off (the sex, not the drugs) on dole day. - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry