NO PLACE TO SEND ADDICTS

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33819, 16 April 1975, Page 19

NO PLACE TO SEND ADDICTS

<New Zealand Press Association

NEW PLYMOUTH. | A Magistrate today released three certified drug addicts on bail after being unable to find a hospital in the North Island prepared to admit them for treatment.

The addicts had been in custody since last Friday. They were charged in the Ne-w Plymouth Magistrate's Court with breaking and entering a suburban chemist shop and possessing instruments for using narcotics. The police said the defendants were heavy users of heroin and cocaine and required treatment urgently. The Court Registrar (Mr B. J. Bayley) said that after two doctors certified the three young men as requiring institutional treatment, efforts were made to place them at Oakley, Tokanui and Porirua Hospitals — the hospitals specified by the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act as referral centres — without success.

Both Mr Bayley and the magistrate, Mr D. B. Pain, S.M., said that the situation was often encountered when dealing with alcoholics and mental health patients. The Taranaki Hospital Board has no facilities for even interim treatment of addicts. Its superintendent-in-chief (Mr D. H. King) said tonight that he regretted the situation, but the board’s sole psychiatrist was already overloaded with other work. Drug addiction treatment facilities would not be avail- ;

able until another psychiatrist was appointed. The addicts were remanded until Monday for probation reports, but have to appear in Court on Thursday to verify they are complying with the bail conditions. In the meantime, the Court is hoping that pressure at one of the authorised hospitals will ease enough for them to be admitted.