Vic-NSW Injecting Rooms – A Review

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"Injecting rooms are to health and recovery like Vaping is to the Quit campaign – both counter intuitive and counter-productive."

• Overdoses – What’s Really Happening?
• Saving Lives – What Does the Evidence Say?

A One-Pillar Stool

Canada’s Drug Strategy is based on four pillars: prevention, enforcement, treatment and harm reduction. SCS sites speak to the issue of harm reduction. However, the way this multipronged approach is currently implemented in Alberta, harm reduction has taken precedence over the other three pillars. Often the Review Committee heard that treatment referrals from SCS sites were little more than nominal suggestions and rarely in the consultation process did anyone speak to the issue of prevention. We were provided with exceedingly limited documentation of successful referrals of SCS clients into the appropriate level of addiction recovery treatment.

Another concern for the Committee related to law enforcement in and around the sites. Contrary to what many believe, trafficking and possession of illicit drugs remains illegal. Substances such as heroin, non-prescribed fentanyl and methamphetamine are still restricted under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The exemption under Section 56.1 is, “For the purpose of allowing certain activities to take place at a supervised consumption site…” This exemption is not a blanket one that suspends the act in some broadly undefined vicinity of the site; it is applied explicitly at the site. The exemption does not authorize drug dealing, or the possession of substantial quantities of illegal substances within an arbitrary distance from the site. (excerpt pp 34,35)

See also Lethbridge supervised consumption site loses government funding after audit

The above sounds familiar – all too familiar. When harm reduction vehicles serve the pro-drug lobby and not the substance use trapped psyche, it is utterly inappropriate.

It is very concerning when the health and well-being of those caught in the tyranny of addiction are not being led into drug use exiting processes, but merely becoming a hapless pawn in a disturbing and manipulative exercise of drug use ‘normalization.’

Instead of an efficacy for recovery review, we are going to double down on another drug consumption site, only perpetuating the growing personal and community harms.

REPORTER @jackpayn  MAY 10, 2021

Dozens of people have been arrested for drug offences as part of police crackdown near Melbourne’s controversial safe injecting room.

Victoria Police charged 16 people with drug trafficking and 14 people with drug possession in Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy during April.

The arrests come after a turbulent past month for the North Richmond medically supervised injecting room that saw a man caught inside the Richmond West Primary School grounds allegedly wielding a knife, while another man was found dead in a park near the school.

Disgruntled parents, who have encountered drug users unconscious, dealing, defecating and urinating next to the primary school, held a crisis meeting in March to demand the injecting room be moved.

While police made no mention of the injecting room in announcing the arrests, Acting Superintendent Kelvin Gale said they were “unwavering” in their commitment to minimising the devastating impacts of drugs on the community.

A man is arrested inside the grounds of Richmond West Primary School after allegedly being found with a knife. Picture: Jason Edwards

“Our number one priority is community safety and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure everyone in Yarra is safe,” he said.

“The harm caused by illicit drugs ripples throughout our entire community – with drug-fuelled violence, burglaries and thefts committed to support an addiction, drug-related road trauma, family violence and sexual assaults.”

Operation Enforcement, a new dedicated local drug enforcement strategy, involves police with local businesses and stakeholders to analyse intelligence every day and provide a targeted response to prevent and illicit drug activity across Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy.

Five men and a woman were charged with drug trafficking and dealing with the proceeds of crime after police allegedly seized cannabis, LSD, magic mushrooms (Psilocybin), cash, six tasers and OC spray at a house in Clifton Hill on April 6. Among the other 24 people arrested was a 45-year-old man allegedly found with heroin, about $1000 worth of casino chips, thousands of dollars in cash and multiple mobile phones in his car in Richmond.

Superintendent Gale said police would continue to have a proactive, ongoing focus targeting street level drug dealing and possession in Yarra local government area.

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For complete story

Drug Free Australia:  A formal complaint has been sent to the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) citing overwhelming evidence that Australia’s two injecting rooms – one each in Sydney and Melbourne – are both tacitly aiding and abetting the local drug trade, significantly enriching drug dealers.

The Sydney injecting room hosts overdose rates which are up to 63 times higher than the overdose histories of its own clients before they register to use the facility, while the Melbourne injecting room has overdose rates a staggering 102 times higher.  Even with 23% of Melbourne’s clients being recently released from prison, a situation which somewhat elevates the chance of an overdose, overdose rates are still 70 times higher than normal.

For complete article

March 2021|Media, Research

Neil Mitchel of 3aw believes that the injecting room is “off the rails” and should be moved as it is  “putting the lives of addicts ahead of the lives of residents and kids.”

But what is more concerning is his interview with the Secretary of Victorian ambulance union Danny Hill. In Danny Hills interview he said many falsehoods and repeated misinformation.

At the start of the interview which you can listen to in the address below, he stated that “Previously we had around 30 deaths in the space of a year in that block and we haven’t had one since.” When questioned about the person who unfortunately died on Thursday he said that “I don’t know the circumstances of yesterday”

Eventually after more cross examination he admitted that he meant that there were “No deaths in the room”

Neil Mitchel asked if there had been any deaths in the area, and he replied “Look I don’t know. But um, there’s none that I um, …that would be the first one, um, that I’ve heard of since the centre has been open.” And that “We had many many more bodies in the streets prior to this centre being opened”

he continued to say that “In the Richmond area the coroner found that there was about 30 [deaths] that went on over the space of a year in a three or four block radius.”

But let’s get to the facts.

The coroner did not say that there were 30 deaths in a three or four block area (which has consistently been misquoted), but rather that in the entire City of Yarra there were 25 deaths in 2018, 16 in 2017, 20 in 2016, 19 in 2015 and 11 in 2014. No square block of area was ever mentioned. This is data from the entire City of Yarra which includes Abbotsford, Collingwood, Carlton, Clifton Hill, Cremorne, Burnley and Fitzroy.

Secondly, the review report showed that whilst in the years before the injection centre, the City of Yarra averaged 19 heroin related deaths per year, in the first 15 months of the injecting rooms operation, the City of Yarra has had 27 deaths, or at a slightly increased rate of 21.6 per year. That’s right, the City of Yarra has seen a greater number of heroin related deaths since the injecting room has been operating.

How the Secretary of Victorian ambulance union Danny Hill remarkably is unaware of this is startling. His falsehood of “many many more bodies” beforehand is clearly wrong, misleading, and outright deceitful.

Even if we look at the number of heroin related deaths within 1km of the injecting room, the review panel report shows that prior to the injecting rooms operation there was on average 10.6 deaths per year. Since the rooms operation the death rate within 1km of the injecting room has been at a rate of 12.8 deaths per year, or a 20% increase.

There wasn’t many many more deaths before. In fact the complete opposite. The number of heroin related deaths in City of Yarra and North Richmond has increased.

Perhaps Secretary of Victorian ambulance union Danny Hill should get his facts right and his memory sorted before he tries again to mislead the public.

Feel free to email Neil Mitchel and also educate Danny Hills here in the links shown below:

Neil Mitchel:
email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Interview: https://www.3aw.com.au/what-neil-mitchell-wants-to-see-happen-to-the-off-the-rails-richmond-drug-injecting-room/

Danny Hills
email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

https://mracgroup.com/blog/f/injecting-room-off-the-rails