Stop pandering to addicts with taxpayers' funds

The Daily Telegraph’s shocking disclosure that complicit doctors are assisting drug addicts obtain a taxpayer-subsidised heroin substitute for injection at the NSW State Labor government’s protected shooting gallery is a further argument for closure of the facility and a re-direction of the State’s resources.The black market in oxycodone, a prescription pain killer subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the Repatriation Pharmacuetical Benefits Scheme, is fuelled by greedy doctors and accelerated by the encouragement drug addicts receive from the welcoming staff at the government’s King Cross facility.

According to figures obtained through use of Freedom of Information Legislation by reporters Janet Fife-Yeomans and Kelvin Bissett, the drug was used in 8200 of the 17,971 injections conducted in the recent June quarter under the supervision of the State government’s shooting gallery staff, compared with just 6110 during the same quarter last year. Taxpayers paid $53.2 million to subsidise 1.63 million scripts in 2007-2008, a $45 million increase in cost over the past seven years. While the NSW government continues to pander to the harm minimisation lobby with little or no evidence of any real success in reducing the number of addicts, Norway, a country with a population of some 4.6 million people, not much greater than that of Sydney, has closed the only drug injecting room in its capital, Oslo. It found that it cost more than $2.6 million to run and was ineffective in preventing some 200 drug deaths a year. The savings will be directed to genuine rehabilitation and mental treatment for addicts. A Drug Advisory Council of Australia spokesman said Norway had adopted world’s best practice and NSW should follow suit. Taxpayers should demand that the Kings Cross shooting gallery be closed and that funds be spent providing places for court-ordered detoxification and rehabilitation. Maintaining addictions and providing refuges for clients of drug syndicates, is not going to help reduce the number of addicts. Providing mental health services for addicts will. This is another example of Labor pursuing discredited ideology to please inner-urban branch members.