Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jul 2000
Source: Canberra Times (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 Canberra Times
Contact:  http://www.canberratimes.com.au/
Author: B. McConnell

WHAT WILL THEY SAY?

When the next person dies in a dark alley or toilet and a mother or father
asks, "could an injecting place have saved my son or daughter?" what will
politicians answer then? In an unprecedented move on June 30 the ACT
Legislative Assembly voted down the ACT Budget, which included funding for
the trial of an injecting place.

That trial had already been passed into law by the Assembly late in 1999 but
was awaiting funding.

Assembly members who voted against the budget because of the inclusion of
the trial spoke of their moral principles. They forgot that the trial was
about trying to save lives. What can be a higher moral principle than that?
People are injecting drugs now, they are doing it in dark secret places, in
alleys and toilets, in very unsafe conditions! This proposal was to bring
those people in out of the dark, to ensure that they lived through the
experience and to bring them closer to treatment.

Overseas experience shows that the health of those using the injecting
places improved whilst there was no suggestion that drug use increased in
the community because of the injecting place.

Those Assembly members who voted against the budget have made a sacrifice of
young lives to very questionable moral principles.

B McConnell President, Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform, Higgins
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