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Pubdate: Tue, 08 May 2001 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Copyright: 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited Contact: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/guardian/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175 Author Patrick Barkham Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Safe Injecting Rooms) AUSTRALIA OPENS FIRST HEROIN INJECTING ROOM Australia's first legal heroin injecting room, the largest "shooting gallery" in the world, has opened its doors to drug users in Sydney's red-light district despite opposition from Aborigines and local business people. The 18-month trial in Kings Cross, an inner city area notorious for prostitution and drug dealing, will aim to cut the country's drug overdose deaths, which have soared from six in 1964 to 958 in 1999. Since it was proposed two years ago, the injecting room has attracted criticism from local people, the Australian prime minister and the Pope, who sent a letter forbidding the Sisters of Charity order to run the centre, where nurses provide supervision and sterile equipment for addicts to inject drugs. An Aboriginal elder lodged a complaint with the Land Titles Office last Friday, claiming that the $A500,000 (?185,000) injecting room was close to an indigenous burial ground. Uniting Care, the charity running the centre, has 21 days to respond. The controversial trial was originally intended to involve several other shooting galleries, but two court challenges and divided public opinion led New South Wales's Labor government to support a single centre. The NSW premier, Bob Carr, whose brother died from a drug overdose, and the police have backed the project, which is funded by money confiscated from convicted drug dealers. The local chamber of commerce, which lost a Supreme Court challenge to the injecting room last month, claimed the centre was already exacerbating drug use in Kings Cross. "As of the last 24 hours there's been an enormous increase in the number of drug addicts and dealers in this area," its spokesman Paul Haege said. Local drug users last night welcomed the shooting gallery, which can offer 200 injections daily, but many said they had been scared off by media attention. Just eight users stepped past waiting camera crews to enter the centre on its first day. "I think it's a good thing, otherwise there are people shooting up in the gutters," said Helen. "But I wouldn't use it after last night when I saw all my friends walking in there on TV." She said she regularly witnessed about five overdoses a night in Kings Cross and believed that the injecting room would definitely help cut drug-related deaths. One in five drug overdoses in New South Wales occur in the district. Critics of the injecting room pointed out that it failed to stop ambulances being called out to three overdoses in Kings Cross on its first night, but the centre's staff appealed for time and space for the trial, the first in an English-speaking country, to work properly. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager