AS THEY ride an unprecedented wave of support in the polls, the Greens have decided to stick with their controversial illicit drugs policy - including support for heroin injecting rooms - heading into this year's state and federal elections.
In policy documents seen by The Age, the party renews its call for a dramatic rethink on drug reform, arguing that dependence should be treated primarily as a health problem, rather than a criminal issue.
The party argues that the community's response to illegal drug use ''needs to recognise that despite a costly 'war on drugs' some people will continue to use illegal drugs''.
Instead, it says, the focus should be on harm minimisation because simply imprisoning users won't solve the problem.
But the idea of medically supervised injecting rooms is likely to prove contentious, particularly in Victoria, where the Greens are trying wrest key inner city seats - state and federal - from Labor.
Although injecting centres have been credited with some success in Sydney's Kings Cross, the idea remains fiercely politicised here. Labor went to the 1999 state election in support of the idea, only to change its position after winning government.
The Greens have long argued for supervised injecting rooms as part of a broader harm minimisation approach.
The Age believes the Greens, after being attacked leading into previous elections, have refined some aspects of the policy in a bid to persuade mainstream voters that it is not as ''dangerous'' or ''radical'' as critics have suggested.
Victorian Senate candidate Richard Di Natale said: ''The bottom line is, we support any intervention within a harm minimisation framework that is supported by evidence.
''There's been a lot of literature on medically supervised injecting rooms. Not only do they provide a safer injecting environment, but they facilitate entry into treatment because you've got direct access to a service provider.''
The Greens' policy also pledges to work towards:
■ Expanding access to illicit drug substitution treatments such as methadone.
■ Imposing treatment orders and/or fines for ''personal drug use'' instead of criminal penalties. But criminal sanctions would still apply to drug dealers.
■ Banning donations from the tobacco and alcohol industries to political parties.
The party's renewed push for medically supervised injecting rooms comes after a report by the Burnet Institute found clear evidence that such facilities were beneficial. Lack of political will was the main stumbling block.
As election campaigning intensifies, Labor and the Liberals are likely to step up attacks on the Greens over the substance of their policies.
At the federal election, the party hopes to win the balance of power in the Senate in its own right, and to wrest the lower house seat of Melbourne from Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner.
The latest Nielsen poll had the Greens' primary vote surging to 15 per cent, almost double what they polled in 2007. Newspoll suggests support for the Greens has hit 16 per cent.
At state level, the Greens already have three upper house MPs and are hoping to gain the balance of power in the lower house by ousting Labor MPs in the inner-city state seats of Melbourne, Brunswick and Richmond.
