In just one month this year three young local Aborigines died from heroin overdose. The Indigenous community in Canberra has been hit hard.

"For this reason and because of the increasing number of deaths across our nation the fifth annual remembrance ceremony on Monday 13 November for those who lose their life to illicit drugs will be special," said Brian McConnell, President of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform. "With an expected new, but grim, record of more than 800 overdose deaths this year there is no corner of the Australian community untouched by this tragedy - a tragedy for which governments are standing in the way of solutions."

"We are destroying our future," Brian McConnell stressed.

Speakers at the remembrance ceremony at Weston Park will be Roslyn Brown, a member of the Ngun(n)awal community who was close to some who have died, and Sir Ronald Wilson, who as President of the Human Rights Commission, led the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families resulting in the Bringing Them Home Report.

"It is deplorable that this year’s ceremony is yet again seeing a large increase in deaths. Even the Prime Minister’s peak drugs advisory body, the Australian National Council on Drugs, says that it is likely to be five years before there is a downward trend in overdose deaths. This is especially devastating news for the Indigenous Community who already have the highest death rate in the world of people in their 30s and 40s", said Brian McConnell. "It is almost as if our governments are fueling the flames by refusing to trial new approaches. Supervised injecting rooms would save lives while we search for better solutions."

"Our governments are not protecting our young from the increasing flood of cheaper and more potent drugs. Indeed those policies appear to have facilitated the rapid spread in recent years of illicit drugs within the local indigenous community."

"What makes it even worse", Brian McConnell continued, "is that parents and communities are made to feel to blame for this predicament. Users and their families are set up for failure by inadequate and scarce treatment options and unrealistic insistence on getting ‘clean’. There is a refusal to understand that addiction is a long term health condition."

"This ceremony is a time for families and friends to grieve amongst a caring community and to recognise the worth of the drug users who have died because of their addiction. It also seeks to lift the veil of shame and silence in relation to illicit drugs that is so disempowering."

12 November 2000

Ends

Place: Weston Park, Yarralumla, ACT at the memorial rock located on the right of Weston Park Road opposite the Prescott Lane junction.

Time: 12:30pm