Pubdate: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 Source: Illawarra Mercury (Australia) Copyright: Illawarra Newspapers Contact: http://mercury.illnews.com.au/ GOVT PLANS DRUGS DEBATE Needle Exchange Staff Cleared Of Wrongdoing The needle exchange program which sparked a furore over teenage heroin addiction was cleared of any wrongdoing yesterday as the NSW Government announced a parliamentary summit on the drugs crisis. A Health Department report cleared staff at Redfern's Caroline Lane exchange of supplying needles to a youth who was pictured shooting up in the gutter. Initially, authorities feared the boy was aged 11 or 12 and he had received needles from the exchange. The report said he was aged 16-17, had not received needles from the exchange and had never been seen at Caroline Lane before the day he was photographed. The pictures caused a sensation with a state election only weeks away and Health Minister Andrew Refshauge immediately suspended the service pending the report released yesterday. Dr Refshauge said the Caroline Lane service would not reopen, instead the Kirketon Rd Centre in Darlinghurst would use a mobile facility to provide a needle exchange in the troubled Block area, assisted by the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service and the local health authority. Mr Carr also announced MPs, law enforcement and health officials would attend an unprecedented five-day parliamentary session to find new ways of tackling drug addiction if Labor was re-elected on March 27. Mr Carr admitted current anti-drugs policies were not working and promised a full-blooded debate where experts like Police Commissioner Peter Ryan could outline their views without fear of political repercussions. "No holds barred, just an open debate ... forget name calling, forget point scoring, forget political argument, just get down to looking at how we deal with this awful problem," Mr Carr said. Mr Carr - a long-time opponent of heroin trials and legal shooting galleries - warned against adopting untested solutions to drug problems. "I've always said that existing policies aren't working, aren't working as we'd want them to work, I've always said that," he said. "The difficulty is that some of the new solutions people enthusiastically promote could be even more disastrous." He denied the summit was merely a talkfest, saying "... a democracy is to some extent a continuing debate". - --- MAP posted-by: Joel W. Johnson