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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 11 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 3248 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

when he began the response to the Chief Minister's speech, talked about education issues and, indeed, drug education, and set it out for our consideration. He hopes that as a subsection of this strategy we will have an education strategy, and others.

It is very important and I am looking forward to my colleague Mr Stefaniak presenting that strategy. He also mentioned the naltrexone trial. I thought I would respond to that as it falls into my area of jurisdiction. We are part of a coordinated range of trials on naltrexone around Australia. Contrary to what was originally presented, that naltrexone was the answer - and it started, by the way, when there was a debate about the heroin trial; "You do not need a heroin trial; what you actually need is naltrexone because naltrexone will be the answer for everything" - well, sorry, the trials have not shown that at all.

What the trials have shown is that naltrexone is another useful drug in our approach as part of a broad strategy. In a very short while, Professor Nick Glasgow, Professor of General Practice, will be presenting findings from the trials he has been running on naltrexone to an academic audience - I think in the next couple of weeks. At that time I hope to be able to make those results public. Certainly, I hope Professor Glasgow will do that.

But as I said at the beginning - and now that Mr Kaine is here, I will reiterate it in case he did not hear it - his comments in a previous debate were a catalyst in making sure that we did do a broad ranging strategy. I do not know if he recalls making those comments, but he did. We had been discussing at the time that perhaps we should and it was just that final "oomph" that moved us that way. But, Mr Kaine, I have to say to you that there is no attempt at all to be deceptive in this strategy.

With regard to the issue of the ongoing consideration of heroin trials and a safe injecting room, the reason it is worded that way is that the matter is still before the Assembly. Contrary to trying to be deceptive, we are trying to be exactly the opposite. To say, "We will deliver a medically supervised injecting room", would be deceptive. Or to say, "We will deliver a heroin trial", would also be deceptive.

That is important. But Mr Kaine also mentioned what we are doing about supply reduction. We were quite keen not to talk about specific police operational procedures. On the other hand, it was also important for us to get the general direction and it should be in a broad strategy like this. You will see at point 16 on page 20, Mr Kaine, that targeting major suppliers and distributors of illicit drugs using intelligence-driven police strategies is there. And this is an important part of what goes on. Even under the most liberal approach to drug policy, we would still be looking at policing - at an approach to make sure that the regulated availability would work.

I would like to comment on a couple of things that Mr Hargreaves mentioned. He asked me the question: How many deaths have occurred in the last year? I am able to provide that information. Last year, Mr Hargreaves, in 1998, 14 people died from overdoses. At October this year the number is four - a greatly reduced number. Unfortunately in a small jurisdiction, I do not think we can draw a statistical analysis from that; other than to say, hopefully, that some of the efforts we have been putting in do identify for people that there are issues about purity; that warnings could help stave off some deaths.

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