Pubdate: Sat, 24 Mar 2001
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2001 The Age Company Ltd
Contact:  250 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia
Website: http://www.theage.com.au/
Forum: http://forums.f2.com.au/login/login.asp?board=TheAge-Talkback
Author: Caroline Overington

DROPPED ADVISER CLAIMS PM BIAS

David Crosbie was travelling across town in a taxi, having a conversation 
with the driver that enraged him.

"I'd told him I worked in the area of drug rehabilitation (Crosbie is the 
executive director of Odyssey House) and he was saying, if a drug user 
collapsed in his cab, he'd roll him into the gutter and leave him there to die.

"I said to him, really? What if the same person ran a red light, and was 
left unconscious? And he said, that's different, that's an accident, so 
he'd call an ambulance.

"Of course, running a red light is illegal, and probably more dangerous to 
other people than taking heroin. I said to him: you'd let the drug addict 
die, and try to save the red light runner? And he agreed with that."

Mr Crosbie, who was this week appointed to the influential Australian 
National Council on Drugs, which advises the Prime Minister, John Howard, 
on drug policy, runs into attitudes like this all the time.

"The frustrating thing is, if a bacteria in the water, or Legionella, was 
killing hundreds of Australia's young people every year, we would be doing 
everything and anything we could to save their lives," he said.

"Instead, every day, people are deciding to get off heroin, and the best we 
can offer them is waiting lists and prejudice. But heroin addiction isn't 
like a hip replacement. People die waiting to get into services, and they 
die because we won't try other ways to solve the problem."

The Australian National Council on Drugs was established by the Prime 
Minister in 1998. Its chairman, Brian Watters, was for 25 years a Salvation 
Army officer. He is opposed to heroin trials and injecting rooms, and once 
said he did not understand why young people did not seek "natural highs, 
like hang-gliding" instead of taking drugs.

Although Major Watters and the Prime Minister share similar views on drug 
policy, the council is required to be independent, and its 16 members 
should have different views on how the drug problem should be handled.

Last week, Mr Howard replaced five of the existing members whose three-year 
terms had expired, among them the founder of Family Drug Support, Tony 
Trimingham, a passionate supporter of heroin trials and injecting rooms, 
prompting claims that he was trying to stack the council with supporters of 
"zero-tolerance" drug policy.

Mr Trimingham's son, Damien, died of a heroin overdose, aged 23, in the 
stairwell of a disused, abandoned public hospital, in February, 1997.

"That's my tragedy, but the greater tragedy is, since he died, we've lost 
another 2000 or 3000 people," Mr Trimingham said. After his son's death, he 
formed Family Drug Support, which advocates "harm reduction" strategies, 
such as injecting rooms.

"What I've discovered is that heroin doesn't get fixed in a few months. I 
support treatment, rehabilitation, detoxification, all that, but we have to 
keep people alive, until they are ready to become drug free. That can take 
10 or 15 years and, in the meantime, people can die," Mr Trimingham said. 
He was appointed to the National Council on Drugs in 1998, and wanted to 
continue for a second, three-year term, largely so the views of parents of 
drug users would be heard.

"I was told by Brian Watters that he had lobbied heavily for me," Mr 
Trimingham said.

"I fully expected to be re-appointed. There are people who have done less 
work than me, who are still there but then I read in the paper that I was 
gone."

By coincidence, he was on the same aeroplane as Major Watters on the day 
the new appointments were announced.

"He claimed to be completely ignorant, made several calls, and was 
generally very distressed and shocked about it, but praised my work, then 
said he had to ring the other members," Mr Trimingham said.

Mr Trimingham believes he was replaced because "I support heroin trials and 
injecting rooms and that was never going to work, with this government."

Major Watters denied this, saying he had known that Mr Trimingham would not 
be reappointed, "but not officially. I'd seen a list that he wasn't on, but 
I didn't know it was final."

"It was a hurtful way for him to find out, to read it in the papers, but 
it's not sinister. Basically, we wanted to get more people from around 
Australia, because we had too many Sydney people."

"We also wanted new blood, new ideas. Tony was a strong advocate of 
injecting rooms, and he is moving off the council. But David Crosbie is 
equally a supporter of those things, and he is joining."

Mr Crosbie agreed that he would be surprised to see himself described as 
supporting "zero tolerance". "Of the 80 people living at Odyssey House, 12 
are children, so we're tough on drugs. If somebody finds a syringe, the 
whole place stops," Mr Crosbie said.

"But the way I understand it, zero-tolerance means, if somebody is using 
drugs, take them to jail. Nobody agrees with that, not even Mr Howard."

Mr Crosbie will be joined on the council by fellow new member, Tonie 
Miller, who works with Tasmania's "Tough Love" group for parents of drug users.

As an example of the work her group does, Ms Miller offered this: "Say a 
large, teenage son, full of hormones, maybe with a skinful of something 
else, is kicking walls. Say the mum comes to us and says: what can I do? I 
get so upset, I just burst into tears. "We brainstorm for mum. She would 
sit quietly while a group of us came up with ideas for her to try for one 
week. Now, one idea we use is plastic whistles. So when the son kicks the 
wall, the mum might take the plastic whistle out of her pocket and blow it, 
loudly."

Ms Miller said it was "rubbish" that she had been appointed to the National 
Council on Drugs because she was an advocate of "zero-tolerance".

"I'm a pharmacist. I dispense methadone to people every day of my life. I 
know you can't wave magic wands and stop people doing these things," she said.

Another new member, Garth Popple, works for the "We Help Ourselves" clinic 
in Sydney's Redfern where drug users go "cold turkey", withdrawing from 
heroin without methadone, naltrexone, or even Panadol to relieve the pain.

He rejects the "zero-tolerance" label, saying: "We have needles, syringes 
in all our bathrooms." The clinic does collect urine samples from 
residents, "but we don't throw them out if they test positive. "What I 
really believe is, if there was endless money, we could do a bit of 
everything. I think of it this way: if I knock on your door and ask for 
$500 to help drug addicts, what would you want it spent on? If you had 
young children, you'd probably say, education, so they never take up drugs. 
If you had a son that died of a heroin overdose, you might say, an 
injecting room. If you have a child with a heroin problem, you might say, 
treatment. Everybody has their own view, so we need to stop fighting 
amongst ourselves and split the money up in a way that makes people happy."

A second Victorian member, Margaret Hamilton, will continue on the council 
for a second, three-year term. She does not believe Mr Trimingham was 
removed from the council because of his views "because they are pretty much 
the same as mine, so if he's gone, I should be gone".

New member Anne Bressington is the founder of Shay Louise House, named 
after her daughter, who choked on her tongue while under the influence of 
heroin.

Ms Bressington said she was not a "zero-tolerance" person. "I support 
needle exchange and methadone. I'm not sure about shooting galleries ... 
Drug users do need care and support, but you've got to draw a line at what 
is support, and what is enabling."

Another new member, Julie Hanbury, is a volunteer counsellor for the Parent 
Drug Information Service in Western Australia. A mother of three, "we've 
experienced drug issues in the family. A couple of years ago, one of my 
children lost a close friend, 16 years old, to heroin, and the shock, the 
desperation, prompted me to get involved."

The head of Sydney's Ted Noffs Foundation, Wesley Noffs, said he would have 
been pleased to serve another three years on the council.

"I'd like to think the decision not to include people like me and Tony is 
not a move against us; it's new blood, and people who can give it more 
time," Mr Noffs said. "And politically, it's actually a bad move for the 
Howard Government to get rid of Tony, because it'll free him up to be as 
vocal as he likes."
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