Island's substance abusers, the chairman of the interim committee on drugs said yesterday.

Mr. Alastair Macdonald, who was appointed chairman of the committee on Tuesday, said the Island also needs a residential drug abuse facility to allow people to enter full treatment.

The rest of the interim committee -- which will oversee the National Drugs Strategy until the statutory National Drugs Authority is established towards the end of the year -- will be appointed within two weeks.

"The major priority we will have to look at is the whole area of treatment,'' said Mr. Macdonald, adding that much work had already been done on prevention and reducing drug supply.

"But one area which has not received the attention it deserves is drugs treatment.'' "One question we have to address is how do we finance treatment. I feel it should be treated like any other illness through medical insurance and we will be trying to get that in place.'' Admitting it would be difficult to persuade insurers to extend the coverage, the Bank of Bermuda private banking manager said: "They are naturally concerned about the cost and we have to ensure it is not unduly onerous.

"The second area is the number of substance abusers who have no coverage and that is something we will have to talk with Government about.'' But he said the committee would also have to examine the Island's treatment facilities to determine what new ones were needed.

"We have to find the most cost-effective solutions to help those who sincerely want to get out of the vicious cycle of substance abuse,'' he said.

"There are clearly not enough addiction treatment programmes on the Island and those which do exist are not totally appropriate. They provide certain useful and important services, but they do not meet all the needs.

"The greatest need is for a residential programme which would for example provide 28-day, fairly intensive programmes in which people could come to grips with their problem.

"We just do not have that. We only have outpatient, non-residential programmes.'' Other needs included more programmes to assist recovering addicts, he said.

Alcoholic Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous were excellent schemes which had taken on much of this role, but other areas also needed to be addressed, he said.

Similarly, there was a need for more treatment programmes in the prisons, he said. "There are some programmes there, but not sufficient.'' He said there was also a need to introduce more rehabilitation schemes to enable ex-prisoners, particularly former addicts, to come back into society and find work.

Coordination to ensure people received the right kind of treatment was also needed, he said. Up to now, the Employee Assistance Programme, of which Mr.

MacDonald was the first chairman, and Benedict Associates had handled much of the coordination, he said.

"But we will need more resources than that,'' he said.

The other values of employee assistance programmes was it allowed employers to intervene without attaching any stigma to the employee, an approach which Mr.

MacDonald wants to expand.

"Decriminalising possession for drugs is something we have to look at,'' he said. "But it cannot be done in a vacuum. We need treatment programmes in place.

"There have to be alternatives to prisons in which people have confidence or else the judiciary will not accept it,'' he said.

And he said decriminalisation of people who drove under the influence of drugs or narcotics also had to be examined. Again, treatment facilities would have to be in place.

But he said all these proposals would fail unless the community was prepared to back first the interim committee and then the National Drugs Authority.

Mr. MacDonald said he intends to ask for the appointment of more than 10 people to the committee, which will be drawn from all walks of life and will be seen as bipartisan.

People selected would represent business, labour, youth, voluntary organisations, education, religion and the media, he said, and would need to be known to have integrity and to be non-partisan.

He said the appointments needed the support of all the Island's political parties to ensure that it had the backing of the community.

"This committee is not the solution,'' he said. "This committee, if effective, will pull together all Bermudians to seek solutions. And there are no quick or easy solutions. The committee's job is to encourage, develop and create a sense of community mindedness to deal with the problem.'' SEEKING SUPPORT -- Mr. Alastair Macdonald, chairman of the interim committee on drugs.