Pubdate: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 Source: Illawarra Mercury (Australia) Copyright: Illawarra Newspapers Contact: http://mercury.illnews.com.au/ Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n504/a08.html http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n505/a10.html http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n486/a05.html http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n534/a03.html http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n485/a07.html SPECIAL LAW WILL STOP RAID BY POLICE NSW Premier Bob Carr addresses Parliament on Australia's first heroin shooting gallery, to be protected against police raids by a legal exemption. Australia's first shooting gallery in Kings Cross will need a special legal exemption to prevent police raids. Premier Bob Carr yesterday said the Government had rejected a proposal to scrap the offence of self-administration of a prohibited drug, the law police cited when they raided an illegal injecting room at the Wayside Chapel in May. Mr Carr said the Government would legislate a special exemption for the shooting gallery. He also said Police Commissioner Peter Ryan and the Health Department would hold negotiations with the injecting room's operator, the Sisters of Charity, to work out how police would operate near the facility. "We're going to change the law in the spring session of Parliament to make the medically supervised injecting room legal and we're going to negotiate police protocols as well," Mr Carr said. "So that will provide the legal framework for this operating." Mr Carr said the Government decided against changing the self-administration law because police said it was a useful tool in stopping addicts shooting up publicly. The Salvation Army's Major Brian Watters said police would be forced to turn a blind eye to drug dealers who would congregate around the shooting gallery. "We should not be allowing people to use drugs on the street; we need to be very firm on this," he said. Mr Ryan has previously raised concerns about drugs having a "honeypot effect" on crime, a claim rejected by St Vincent's Hospital alcohol and drug service head Alex Wodak. "I think we all know that drug injecting has been going on in Kings Cross for about 30 years, it has been some sort of a honeypot there since the late 1960s," Dr Wodak said. "I don't think personally an injecting room is going to change anything except people are going to be injecting in a place where they can get help rather than injecting on the streets where they offend passers-by and they die." - --- MAP posted-by: Thunder