Safe drinking rooms

A proposal to introduce safe drinking rooms to get alcoholics off the street deserved consideration, NSW Premier Bob Carr said today.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has reportedly thrown her support behind the concept, which is used in England.

She told a council meeting earlier this week she hoped the council's social plan would refer to so-called wet centres.

Mr Carr said it was a sincere proposal, although he did not know whether it was practical.

"I'm not sure it would work," he told reporters.

"It deserves to be looked at. How you make the separation between people who are homeless because of an alcohol dependency and people who are sometimes over-enthusiastic drinkers I don't know.

"I'd need to be persuaded of it."

I thought that's what we called pubs? What happened to RSA? Did we just give up on that as an idea that didn't really work? And wouldn't a safer environment for alcoholics be a dry room?