The Department of Health was negotiating with a Victorian pharmaceutical company to manufacture heroin in Australia for pain relief of terminal cancer patients, an article this day in 1982 revealed. A Department of Health spokesman said heroin had been used in Australia as a general narcotic analgesic until 1953 when, because of its addictive nature and associated security risks, its use had been abandoned. However, in 1978 a joint Commonwealth-state advisory body requested advice from the National Health and Medical Research Council on the effectiveness of heroin as an analgesic. "The NHMRC expressed its confidence in the effect of heroin as an analgesic which does not have many of the unpleasant side effects associated with other analgesics", the spokesman said. The annual meeting of Commonwealth and state health ministers in 1980 had approved, in principle, that heroin be reintroduced with the Commonwealth co-ordinating supply and the states assuming responsibility for administering the drug. As the importation, manufacture or use of heroin was prohibited, special legislation would be required. The president of the ACT Cancer Society society, Dr Bill Burch, said that the meeting would hear expert advice to enable the society to formulate its view. "What we are really seeking to do is obtain the best treatment for sufferers of cancer," he said. See https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/13933886