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Sydney has shown us the way on drugs with safe injecting facility


Overview

Originally Published: 02/18/2015

Post Date: 02/22/2015

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by JEFF KENNETT - 43rd Premier of Victoria


Summary/Abstract

Medically Supervised Injecting Centers are an evidence-based approach to minimize harms associated with injecting drug use. The scientific evidence is clear, and shows they provide significant benefits to the individuals who use them, as well as to the broader community in which they are situated.

Content

LAST weekend the Sunday Herald Sun ran a major article headlined “Inner city zombie town” that said “a new push to set up a legal heroin shooting gallery in one of Melbourne’s most drug-affected suburbs dubbed ‘zombie town’ has angered traders and residents”.

The suburb was Richmond but could have easily included Footscray or one of several other suburbs where open trafficking and use of drugs has grown to epidemic levels. The “shooting gallery”, of course, was a reference to a safe injecting facility.

Before any reader accuses me of going soft or becoming a bleeding-heart Leftie, I’ll ask you to finish reading this article before judging me. And I want you to keep on open mind on the bigger issue.

Certain suburbs in Victoria have long had a reputation of almost unfettered drug abuse committed in public places, whether it’s dealing or injecting. The self-abuse has often led to overdoses and deaths.

The users, sadly, are more often than not people who have long suffered a range of debilitating conditions, from social exclusion, domestic violence, discrimination, homelessness and of course a range of mental illnesses. Most are long-term unemployed.

They are people who through the throw of the dice have not been able to experience the quality and opportunities most of us enjoy.

Mostly they live from day to day, scrounging a living and being involved in petty crime to support their habit, their next fix.

Kings Cross in Sydney was once the worst of such suburbs. Today it is clean; a good and exciting place to visit. The reason for the dramatic change? The introduction of Australia’s first and still only Medically Supervised Injecting Centre

The community and law enforcement in Kings Cross had been trying to address the problem for years without success. After a summit called by then Premier Bob Carr, legislation was passed for an 18-month trial, after a court challenge, on April 5, 2001.

The center opened on May 6 under the supervision of Uniting Care.

Of course there was a lot of opposition from many individuals and community associations along the lines of “not in my back yard”.

Those backing the MSIC argued that the location had to be where people used drugs, where trading and overdoses were occurring: in the main street of Kings Cross. And with the support of the government and police, they won the argument.

It opened at 66 Darlinghurst Rd and almost 14 years later still occupies the same site, a prime location opposite the railway station.

The center has been providing safe, clean facilities for 14 years. Those who objected the most when it was proposed are now, based on the center’s results, among its greatest supporters.

They would strongly argue against any suggestion that the center be closed or moved.

In Victoria we have been looking for better ways of dealing with this issue and we forget that many parents are crying because of the death of a child through an overdose, or the use of dirty needles. Worse, we fail to give fellow citizens who are dealing with a terrible combination of afflictions any support at all.

I suspect I once argued against the establishment of a supervised injecting facility although I can’t remember if it was one of the recommendations of the drug inquiry my government established in Victoria in 1995 under Professor David Pennington. Regardless, I was wrong and I wish we had been more proactive. Fewer people would have died; more would have had a chance of a better life. Why have I changed my view? Because last year I was approached because most of the clients of Sydney’s MSIC suffer serious degrees of mental illness.

No one seems to want to help this group of people and beyond blue should be helping all people in need, not just those who are employed, in families, well dressed and articulate.

So last month I visited the Kings Cross center. I met the head of Uniting Care, some of the staff and some of the clients. I was impressed by the quality of care and supervision, the location and the extraordinary good work it does.

In fact, if anyone should be receiving knighthoods, it is the staff at the center who are so committed to helping those who are in so much need, committed to treating them as human beings.

So that is why I am asking you to keep an open mind on the issue.

If anyone has a better solution to those that have been tried but have clearly failed, please, let’s hear it, because we face a social calamity that is getting worse, not better.

Even I am prepared to accept a proven idea from NSW, given that they have 14 years of evidence. Supervised injecting centers exist in 10 countries — they are not a new idea.

The funding for the Sydney center comes from confiscated proceeds of crime, so no other government program is threatened. We could do the same here.

Let’s rise above past preconceived views, consider the facts and evidence, and at least have the debate that clearly could lead to addressing some of the problems that exist in Richmond, Footscray and elsewhere.

If that makes me a softie or a Leftie, so be it. I would rather be recognized for what I think I have always been an economic conservative and a social liberal.

You call it as you see it. I just want a solution.

Jeffrey Gibb Kennett (born 2 March 1948), is a former Australian politician who was the 43rd  Premier of Victoria between 1992 and 1999 and a current media commentator. He is the founding Chairman of beyondblue, a national organisation "working to reduce the impact of depression and anxiety in the community".

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