HTTP/1.0 200 OK Content-Type: text/html
Pubdate: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Copyright: 2001 The Sydney Morning Herald Contact: GPO Box 3771, Sydney NSW 2001 Fax: 61-(0)2-9282 3492 Website: http://www.smh.com.au/ Forum: http://forums.fairfax.com.au/ Author: Bernard Lagan STATE DPP CALLS FOR HEROIN ON PRESCRIPTION The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions says doctors should be allowed to prescribe free heroin. In a new book - Getting Justice Done - Mr Nicholas Cowdery, QC, writes that heroin profits must be reduced to break the link between the drug and crime. He suggests doctors be allowed to prescribe heroin to registered addicts who finance their drug habits through crimes such as dealing and theft. "This is not heroin on demand, available from the corner store," says Mr Cowdery who proposes that Australia's tightly supervised opium production in Tasmania - used for medical purposes - be expanded to become a source for the supply of prescription heroin. He writes: "While there might be a slight, short-term increase in consumption, we might be able to achieve at least the modest measures of success we have had in relation to tobacco and alcohol. "This would be a policy of openness and confrontation: getting the problem out in the open and confronting it together." His book, to be published on Friday, gives an insider's view of the NSW criminal justice system which will not please the Carr Government. Mr Cowdery says most government agencies are "running on empty". And the State criminal justice system "is at the point of breakdown". Money has been progressively squeezed out of the Government's criminal justice agencies and diverted elsewhere, he says. "There is also an irrational commitment by the NSW Government to being debt-free, which keeps overall public spending at too low a level to provide necessary services to the standard we expect." He argues that agencies including police, courts, the Health Department and Corrective Services do not share a dedication to achieving justice. "Rather, it seems that they are simply thrown against each other at the various stages of a person's progress through the gateways from charge to imprisonment and have to find ways to connect while keeping the financial and other costs of doing so at the lowest level achievable," Mr Cowdery writes. As an example he talks about the use of DNA identification which is recognised as a superior crime-fighting tool. The NSW Health Department has only three "operational" DNA scientists involved in testing samples for criminal prosecutions. Victoria has 17. His book argues that if governments put more cash into resolving youth problems and crime-prevention strategies, money would be saved by fewer people turning to crime. "Every holiday period, police stack the highways with hidden speed detectors and write thousands of tickets. The priority is clearly revenue-raising. "If it were crime reduction, the effort would be put into making these measures as visible as possible," he says. - --- MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer