SOLVENTS OFFER A FATAL HIGH

THE police call them the gutter drugs - petrol, paints, glues and solvents.

The kids who sniff them to get a desperate high are the poorest of the poor.

Those without money for alcohol or marijuana, frowned upon by their peers as
losers.

Sgt Gill Wilson, from the police alcohol and drug co-ordination unit, says
Perth's sniffing problem comes and goes in waves.

Over the past few years wood glues, marker pens containing certain
chemicals, petrol, deodorants and paint have all been used to get a high.

"In Rockingham in the mid-1990s glue was huge," Sgt Wilson said.

"You would walk through parks and there would be plastic bags everywhere
with glue in them but now you don't see a thing."

A disproportionate number of sniffers were Aboriginal children, but there
were examples of non-Aboriginal children being involved.

Sgt Wilson said one prominent girls' school had banned its boarders from
using aerosol deodorants because they were inhaling the contents to get a
high.

The substance of choice now for chronic sniffers in the city is toluene - a
chemical so powerful it is used by professional cleaners.

The fumes deliver a euphoric high which is followed by a crashing hangover
so fearsome some children will go for hours inhaling the chemical to avoid
the pain of the come-down.

Toluene users carry the liquid in a cool drink bottle which they
periodically raise to their faces. Their eyes will probably be streaming
while they do it.

Paint is the second favourite substance for sniffers - the paint is sprayed
in a plastic bag which is then held to the face.

These users are even easier to spot because they have tell-tale paint
(normally chrome for no other reason than that it is trendy) over their
hands and face.

There may also be a plastic bag peeking out from a shirt sleeve - the
favoured hiding position.

The Protective Custody Act gives police the power to destroy any substance
suspected of being used for intoxication.

But it's still a cat and mouse game between authorities and the sniffers.

Part of the problem is that the substances are not illegal. To combat this
police, have arrived at an accord with WA businesses - hence the padlocks on
spray paint cases.

St John Ambulance paramedic Michael Ficko said most sniffers were in their
early teens.

The 29-year-old, who worked as a nurse before starting work on the streets
six years ago, said he was usually called to tend to sniffers because they
were in other trouble - having stepped in front of a passing car in a stupor
or having cut themselves on barbed wire when scaling a fence.

Northbridge and the city were common areas and each ambulance crew would
pick up a handful of cases each year.

"Some can be violent, some can be withdrawn," Mr Ficko said.

The drill for tending to the children is generally the same - oxygen is
usually needed and the vital signs are taken.

"Quite often it can knock off their respiratory tract," Mr Ficko explained.

Police and health professionals agree the problem is mainly confined to
young Aboriginals.

In January, the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee warned that solvent abuse
was on the verge of an epidemic in Aboriginal communities and the State
Government was failing dismally to address its devastating impact.

The comments were prompted by the case of a Goldfields man who spent more
than 2,1/2 years in jail after being found incapable of standing trial on a
robbery charge because of years of chronic solvent abuse.

In and out of institutions since he was 15, he became known as the ice-cream
boy in 1995 when he was sent to a juvenile detention facility on remand for
stealing a $1.90 ice-cream.

Diagnosed with untreatable and volatile substance-induced dementia, he was
put on an indefinite jail term in April 2000 under the Mentally Impaired
Defendants Act. Nyoongar Patrol executive director Maria McAtackney said
that six months ago the patrol was picking up 11 children who had been
sniffing each nigtht.

Now it saw five or six in a whole weekend, indicating the situation had
improved.

The patrol had seen children as young as eight hooked on solvents but in the
past year there appeared to be more adults sniffing.

"They don't come into the city as much because they can be detected on the
trains," Ms McAtackney said.

"They are very aggressive, they become abusive. They are very anti-social.

"It gives them a totally different personality.

"But when they are not sniffing they are really lovely kids."